Prototype 2 Change Skin

[Jennifer Kovachick]

TheHuman-Robot Collaboration and Companionship Lab developed a soft robotic skin that can change its texture to express its internal state, such as emotions. The prototype skin can change its skin through a combination of goosebumps and spikes.

I found a livery for the prototype F-15A (intended for the F-15C) that seems to work and look just fine. It is located in the DCS website Downloads under User Files, filtered for Game: DCS World 1.5. It was uploaded by "8117devin". I don't know how to contact that person to request a modification.

The livery of subject here seems to be a neutral light gray with somewhat faded day-glow orange. It looks really good, except that the gray should really be a slightly faded tone of Air Superiority Blue FS 35450.

Is there anyone here that can modify that livery (skin) to change the gray to Air Superiority Blue [maybe just slightly faded]? And if so, can you also make a livery without the orange in the 'Air Superiority Blue' scheme...such as 73-090 of the 555th TFTS at Luke AFB with the white "LA" tail code, from the late 1970's?

Im a bit of a prototype skin fan myself. Spent most of my trial period time in the Hornet flying it's prototype skin. Wasn't aware that the Eagle had one as well. Thanks for pointing that out. I created a skin using the color you mentioned above and named it "F-15 Prototype Skin V2". I was the best I could do without having to start completely from scratch.

I figured out how to change the color of the skin to air superiority blue, removing the dark ghost gray from the DCS paint kit template, and adding the US insignia without the blue border. But no AF number or tail code. I don't have a picture handy to show, though. I modified a skin for the F-5E in air superiority blue, too. I think it looks pretty sharp in that color.

Yours looks pretty good. Did you fade the orange? It looks more faded/weathered. That still looks like ghost gray instead of air superiority blue, though. But it's subtle and hard to tell for sure. I should dig back into it and make one with a "fresh" paint job of day-glo orange and air-superiority blue. I think it was that orange. This was "my plane" back in the 70s when I was about 8 years old. I still can't believe I get to sit in it and fly it...in DCS.

I basically created a copy of the original as a second layer. Then added the new(more intense) color and reduced the opacity so that the weathering, bolds, seams etc. from the original image would still be visible. From there I just tried to find the right balance between opacity & brightness. To answer your question, yes, I had to fade the orange area in addition to the other areas as 2 layers of orange was...well..too orangie.

Thank you for visiting nature.com. You are using a browser version with limited support for CSS. To obtain the best experience, we recommend you use a more up to date browser (or turn off compatibility mode in Internet Explorer). In the meantime, to ensure continued support, we are displaying the site without styles and JavaScript.

In nature, organisms have evolved functional organs with mechanically adaptive compatibility to accommodate complicated living environment, which provides inspiration for developing artificially intelligent materials systems1,2,3. The ingenious strategy for coupling mechanically adaptive contact state and surface/interface interactions of organs, plays an important role for realizing excellent friction/lubrication performance in the dynamic contact process during locomotion4,5,6. For example, the excellent lubrication performance of natural articular system under dynamic harsh loading/unloading condition is obtained by the mechanically adaptive cartilage layer and highly hydrated surface7,8,9. Meanwhile, considering the intelligent design concept, artificially responsive material systems such as supramolecules10,11,12, hydrogels9,13,14,15,16, and polymer brushes17,18,19,20 have been designed to regulate the surface interactions for achieving desirable friction force. However, these systems commonly rely on the change of surface molecular states or hydration degree of responsive layers, while leaves the friction contribution from tunable contact states out of consideration. Furthermore, the poor mechanical tolerance of these responsive layers commonly results in a limited regulation magnitude of friction force. In fact, mechanical properties around materials surface also affect the interface contact state and thus control the friction force21. Nevertheless, inherent mechanical properties of materials is difficult to be changed directly/sharply once prepared, limiting the adaptive manipulation of contact states. So, it is still a great challenge to construct intelligent friction/lubrication materials system, based on synergistic regulation strategy coupling mechanical adaptive contact states with surface interactions.

a The photography of a longsnout catfish in water and the corresponding schematic diagram of its body contour, mucus and muscle. The schematic diagram was reproduced with permission from ref. 29. Copyright 1988 Springer Nature. b Modulus adaptive switchable lubrication when fish being caught: (i) schematic illustration of escaping process of fish being caught, (ii) fish was calm and easy to catch, (iii) fish was struggling and hard to catch, and (iv) the correlationship between the skin muscle modulus and COF to demonstrate the modulus adaptive switchable lubrication phenomenon of fish. c Schematic diagram showing the conceptual structure of MALH inspired by instant muscle-hardening mechanism of fish.

a Schematic illustration for the preparation of MALH and thermal-triggered modulus change mechanism. The dark blue filled area represented ionic interaction, the dark red and red filled area represented the cooperative effects of hydrophobic interaction and the enhanced ionic interaction. b The schematic diagram showing the fish-like adaptive switchable lubrication of MALH.

Although the conceptual display of the switchable lubrication behavior was successfully realized, it was still difficult to make MALH become an assembled device for more universal application. The existing hydration layer at surface of hydrogels can limit their adhesion ability and prevent them from attaching to other substrates46,47. In order to overcome this drawback, gradient cross-linked polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) was covalently bonded onto one side of MALH to avoid the hydration layer and provide strong adhesion. As a result, one kind of modulus adaptive switchable lubrication device (MASLD) was prepared successfully. The cross-section morphology showed that MASLD was a four-layer device including lubricating layer (i), phase-separation hydrogel matrix (ii), highly cross-linked PDMS layer (iii), and lightly cross-linked PDMS layer (iv) (Fig. 6a).

The SEM (Phenom ProX G5) and optical microscope Olympus BX51 were employed to observe the surface morphology of samples. Moreover, for the polymer brush growth kinetics characterization, cross-section of the samples being immersed in water was imaged by optical microscope to observe the swelling thickness of polymer brushes, and cross-section of the samples dried was imaged by SEM to observe the deswelling thickness of polymer brushes.

Y.Z., S.M., and F.Z. conceived the idea. S.M. and Y.Z. designed the experimental protocol. Y.Z. performed and completed the entire experimental studies. W.Z., H.L., X.W., B.Y., M.C., and X.Z. provided technical suggestions. Y.Z., S.M., and F.Z. wrote the paper and all authors discussed the manuscript. S.M. and F.Z. supervised the entire research.

A product of the university's Human-Robot Collaboration and Companionship Lab, the prototype robot has a soft outer "skin" that exhibits different textures depending on what it wants to tell the person interacting with it.

The engineers were inspired to create the skin based on their observations of how humans interact with other animal species, reading visual and haptic cues for information on the creature's mental state.

"We have a lot of interesting relationships with other species," said Guy Hoffman, assistant professor at Cornell's Sibley School of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, who led the students at the Human-Robot Collaboration and Companionship Lab.

The expressive skin is made up of multiple sheets of these air pockets, allowing many textures to be generated in various patterns. To mimic animal behaviours, the engineers chose goosebumps and spikes for the prototype.

Varying the frequency or level of air pressure produces different effects. A video produced by Cornell University shows the robot pulsing with exaggerated goosebumps when "happy" and shooting out spikes at a fast rhythm when "angry". A slower, more meandering pattern emerges when the robot is "sad".

The Human-Robot Collaboration and Companionship Lab focuses on social robots like Aibo and Paro whose primary purpose is to interact with humans. The team wanted to expand the ways in which these machines can communicate with the people around them.

"At the moment, most social robots express [their] internal state only by using facial expressions and gestures," the team wrote in a paper presented in April at the International Conference on Soft Robotics in Livorno, Italy.

Their research also has relevance for the wider field of robotics, where the psychology of users is a key consideration, particularly as artificial intelligences appear in more areas of people's lives.

We will only use your email address to send you the newsletters you have requested. We will never give your details to anyone else without your consent. You can unsubscribe at any time by clicking on the unsubscribe link at the bottom of every email, or by emailing us at [email protected].

3a8082e126