An integration of soft materials, sensors and flexible electronics is bringing robotic “skin” closer than ever to reality
Human skin is soft and stretchy and has millions of nerve endings that sense heat and touch. This makes it a superb instrument for detecting and responding to the outside world. Engineers have been working to reproduce these abilities in a synthetic version for the past 40 years, but such attempts have always fallen fall short of the versatility and adaptability of living skin.
Touch and temperature sensors were the first to be developed for this kind of system. Wei Gao, a biomedical engineer at the California Institute of Technology, decided to try combining these sensors with ones that could detect chemicals. “We wanted to create a robotic skin that has the physical sensing capability—basically what people already do,” Gao says. “And in addition, we wanted to give it powerful chemical-sensing capability.
Gao’s project required an external device to process the e-skin’s sensor data. Multiple layers of metallic ink were used—layers used for sensing and stability and to wirelessly transmit sensor data to a nearby computer or phone for collection and processing. But this is not the only way for robotic skin to analyze the information it picks up. Other labs are working on skins that sort through information themselves, similar to the way a human nervous system would.
In addition to remotely controlling robots or teaching them to adapt to their environments, electronic skins could have many other applications. “A lot of the opportunities, I think, aren’t for robots,” says Carmel Majidi, a mechanical engineer at Carnegie Mellon University, whose lab specializes in developing soft materials for human-compatible electronics. Majidi envisions e-skins making good sensors for robots but also for more mundane objects.
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