« Ada - der intelligente Raum » - Universität und ETH Zürich an der Expo.02


		Fundamental principles
		Sensory organs
			Touch
			Sight
			Hearing
			Smell
			Taste
		Processing data
		Interaction

Sense of touch in humans

At two square metres for adults, the skin is the human body’s largest organ. Through the skin, we sense pressure, temperature, vibration, physical composition and pain.



Cross-section of the skin

This is made possible by the true skin, the dermis, with a varying number of different so-called receptors. For detecting pressure and vibration, for example, there are up to 170 tactile bodies per square centimetre. The Meissner’s corpuscles are sensitive to touch. They are most frequently found on the fingertips and the tip of the tongue. Pressure is detected by means of the Pacinian corpuscles and the Merkel’s discs. The Krause’s corpuscles, on the other hand, react to low temperatures and the Ruffini’s corpuscles to warmth.

Ada’s sense of touch

The active sensory floor can be thought of as Ada’s skin. It is composed of hexagonal floor plates equipped with weight sensors. These sensors enable Ada to determine which floor plate a visitor is standing on. With a corresponding computational procedure, Ada is able to determine where visitors are located within the space and in which direction they are moving, even if she is not able to «see» this using her cameras. She can only «feel» pressure with her sense of touch.



The interior of a floor plate

The floor plates function like a neural network. When a floor plate lights up, it then communicates this to the adjacent floor plates. Since the individual floor plate knows the state of the overall system as well as that of its neighbour, it is then able to react accordingly.

At the same time, Ada’s skin also serves as a communications organ whose play with light allows Ada to «communicate».