As technology continues to progress at an astonishing rate, researchers are working to develop new interfaces that enhance how humans interact with machines. One cutting-edge area of development is electronic skin, also known as e-skin. Electronic skin industry utilizes tiny, flexible sensors and circuits that can mimic some of the key functions of human skin. These include the ability to sense touch, temperature, and other environmental stimuli. When fully realized, e-skin promises to revolutionize how we control and experience devices and robots.
Sensing Touch and Physical Cues
Some of the most impressive demonstrations of Electronic Skin so far involve creating artificial skin that can sense touch. Researchers at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign developed an e-skin capable of detecting 16 distinct types of single and multi-finger touches, including tapping, swiping, and pinching gestures. The secret is an extremely thin, flexible sensor made of interlaced gold nanowires only 150 nanometers wide. These nanostructured networks interface with microcontrollers to interpret subtle variations in physical contact.
Others are working to give e-skin an even wider range of sensory abilities. Scientists at the Georgia Institute of Technology created an artificial skin that can distinguish subtle textures like sandpaper and detect shapes and edges of physical objects through e-skin covering a robotic hand. These ultra-thin, flexible sensors leverage the piezoresistive effect, where pressure on the material causes a change in electrical resistance. Combining multiple sensors allows for creating a “tactile map” that machines can use like human psychophysical cues.
Monitoring Health and Wellness
In addition to touch and texture sensing, e-skin shows promise for important health monitoring applications. Researchers at Northwestern University developed a specialized e-skin able to monitor vital signs like heart and respiration rates through a thin, flexible patch no larger than a Band-Aid. Piezoelectric nanogenerators harvest energy from the wearer’s movements and use it to power integrated sensors and wireless data transmission.
Another group created an ultra-thin e-skin capable of measuring lactate levels through perspiration. When integrated into clothing or wristbands, this could allow for continuous monitoring of exercise performance and metabolic health. The e-skin utilizes an electrochemical biosensor with an enzymatic lactate oxidase detector. Significant focus on expanding these types of capabilities could enable entirely new paradigms for personalized healthcare and diagnostics.
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