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Bringing  us one step closer to the day when we'll finally have our own Terminator, Mark 1, to do the laundry is news that scientists have developed sensitive skin for robots. The skins convert tiny changes in pressure into electrical signals that a processor can understand and is as sensitive as human skin.

Two groups developed separate skins.The University of California, Berkeley placed an array of pressure sensitive resistors on top of a nanowire thin-film transistor (TFT). Stanford University created much the same but with less layers.

"Instead of laminating a pressure-sensitive resistor array on top of a nanowire TFT array, we made our transistors to be pressure sensitive," Professor Bao of Standord University, explained to BBC News.

Both skins can detect tiny changes in pressure in a tenth of a second over a large range - from five grams per square centimeter to forty times that amount. The next goal is to minimize the distance between the transistors so the skin can feel in more detail.