JAPANESE scientists have built the world’s most sensitive dummy — a mannequin capable of “feeling” human pain.

The adult-sized doll, which is named “Damitaro” and resembles an elderly Japanese man, will be used to develop a breed of robots capable of rescuing human beings after natural disasters without injuring them further.

The mannequin, which has a rubber skin covered in 850 ultra-sensitive pads, is the centrepiece of this year’s meeting of Japan’s Robotics Society and a critical part of Japan’s International Rescue Systems (IRS) project — a programme aimed at preparing Japan for a massive earthquake that many seismologists consider to be inevitable. Japan remains haunted by the quake that devastated Kobe in 1995, claiming more than 6,000 lives.

The pain sensors are just a few hundredths of a millimeter thick and register even the slightest pressure on the skin, or twisting of the bones. The readings are sent to a computer and are compared with normal human reactions to the same forces. An image of Damitaro’s body appears on the screen, with the areas of most pain marked in the darkest colours.

The mannequin is the creation of Yasuhiro Masutani of Osaka University. It is a response to the success of Japan’s robotics engineers, who have built robots that can make their way through rubble and assist human rescue workers by locating survivors.

Machines such as the snake-shaped IRS Soryu can work its way into pockets of wreckage where people would not be able to go. It can be equipped with cameras, heat detectors and even a device to seek out mobile phone signals.

More recently the IRS’s arsenal has developed metallic creatures with names such as Elastor, Ninja and Titan — robots that should eventually be able to delve independently into ruined buildings and retrieve survivors. Tests have begun on rescue robots capable of carrying a human in their arms and on a robotic “power suit” that will assist rescuers in moving heavy obstacles.

Damitaro’s role will be to lie among the twisted girders of a mock ruin and educate his mechanical saviours in how much wrenching an injured human being can take when he is being rescued. Doctors will evaluate whether Damitaro has been handled too violently, or whether the new robot recruits are simply too clumsy to be useful.

The IRS has pinned its hopes on robot rescuers because of the experience of Kobe. The first three days after a big quake or disaster are known as the “72 golden hours” and represent the time that it takes for survival rates among those trapped under a collapsed building to be reduced dramatically. The sense of urgency has been fuelled by a recent Cabinet Office report, which estimated that 30per cent of the country’s 44 million houses would not survive a quake as big as Kobe.

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