Advanced Bio‐Inspired Mechanical Sensing Technology: Learning from Nature but Going beyond Nature

Abstract

The high‐performance optimized design of industrial sensor has been a challenging point of breakthrough in high‐end equipment manufacturing technology since its invention. Highly sensitive detectors have emerged during a long evolutionary period and have shown to be essential tools for ensuring species survival and reproduction. As a result, bio‐sensors have served as a great source of inspiration for high‐sensitivity and high‐performance sensor. Mechanism of bio‐sensors in mechanical detection of three common arthropods, as well as the most recent research results in bio‐mimetic devices, have been discussed in this study. The structure of bio‐detectors and bio‐sensors has been creatively split into environmental information capture device and transduction unit from the standpoint of biological sensing mechanisms and engineering technology. And development of bio‐sensors will rely on design and exploitation of mechanical structures and functional materials with various couplings. Exploration of bionic mechanical sensors is in its early stages and further research is required. High‐performance research on biological detectors and multi‐level bionic design on industrial sensors have been enhanced by revealing mechanism of environmental information capture in environment capture device from basic science and synthesizing new multi‐functional materials of transduction unit with a combination of biological materials and production technology.

Advanced Bioinspired Organic Sensors for Future‐Oriented Intelligent Applications

“…Sensors, acting as the bridge connecting the external environment and electrical signals, have been widely applied to diverse fields, such as image sensors, medical monitoring, robots, and manufacturing process monitoring. [1][2][3][4][5] In recent years, with the rapid development of big data, artificial intelligence (AI), and the Internet of Things (IoTs), sensor technologies have been confronted with new challenges from materials, sensing mechanisms, and functionalities to deal with the complex sensing tasks and high energy consumptions. [6][7][8][9] Note that, living organisms have the ability to perceive the changes in the external environment with ultrahigh sensitivity, rapid response, high energy-efficiency, and selfadaptability by the sensory organs containing vision, touch, hearing, olfaction, and gustation.…”

Skin‐Inspired Capacitive Flexible Tactile Sensor with an Asymmetric Structure for Detecting Directional Shear Forces

“…[1,36] Therefore, most biomimetic tactile sensors are inspired by skin structures such as mechanoreceptors and interlocked spinous layers. [36][37][38][39][40][41][42] Human skin can perceive the direction of tiny stimulations owing to the presence of hair and the longitudinal lanceolate endings around the hair follicle. [2] Similarly, hairs on arthropods act as stimulatedinformation capturing devices: the biological tissue at the root of the hair acts as a transduction unit, whereas the nerve cells act as intelligent processing modules.…”

“…[2] Similarly, hairs on arthropods act as stimulatedinformation capturing devices: the biological tissue at the root of the hair acts as a transduction unit, whereas the nerve cells act as intelligent processing modules. [38] Hair can distinguish directional stimulation to the transduction unit because of its asymmetric tilted structure. Hence, hair-like structures provide a novel www.advancedscience.com biomimetic approach for flexible tactile sensors for sensing shear and friction forces.…”