Bioinspired Electronics for Artificial Sensory Systems

Abstract

Humans have a myriad of sensory receptors in different sense organs that form the five traditionally recognized senses of sight, hearing, smell, taste, and touch. These receptors detect diverse stimuli originating from the world and turn them into brain‐interpretable electrical impulses for sensory cognitive processing, enabling us to communicate and socialize. Developments in biologically inspired electronics have led to the demonstration of a wide range of electronic sensors in all five traditional categories, with the potential to impact a broad spectrum of applications. Here, recent advances in bioinspired electronics that can function as potential artificial sensory systems, including prosthesis and humanoid robots are reviewed. The mechanisms and demonstrations in mimicking biological sensory systems are individually discussed and the remaining future challenges that must be solved for their versatile use are analyzed. Recent progress in bioinspired electronic sensors shows that the five traditional senses are successfully mimicked using novel electronic components and the performance regarding sensitivity, selectivity, and accuracy have improved to levels that outperform human sensory organs. Finally, neural interfacing techniques for connecting artificial sensors to the brain are discussed.

Smart Sensing Systems Using Wearable Optoelectronics

“…The entire forms of devices using PUA elastomers can endure up to extreme stretchability (2500%) without failure. In addition to the good mechanical stability of underlying substrates, the conformal and robust coupling issues of skin have been another concern for wearable optoelectronic sensors . Reliable and robust coupling to wet, soft, and strain‐induced tissues or surfaces is desirable, as these features promote reliable acquisition of sensing signals.…”

“…In addition to the good mechanical stability of underlying substrates, the conformal and robust coupling issues of skin have been another concern for wearable optoelectronic sensors. [21,22] Reliable and robust coupling to wet, soft, and strain-induced tissues or surfaces is desirable, as these features promote reliable acquisition of sensing signals. Underlying substrates that have a weak coupling problem can be easily removed from wet and stain-induced tissues or surfaces.…”

Cyber–Physiochemical Interfaces

“…Living things of any scale, from cells and microorganisms, to plants and animals, rely on the continuous internal and external information exchange, such as trans‐membrane ion transport, viral infection, photosynthesis, and respiration . The mammalian skin is a typical example of a multifunctional interface to illustrate signal exchange, including temperature, humidity, and various mechanical signals .…”

IR Artificial Compound Eye

“…The FoVs of single ommatidium and the entire component are experimentally measured as 8° and 148°, respectively. The thin shell structure reduces the imaging aberration of the sub‐apertures at different azimuth angles; meanwhile, such structure makes the focal plane of the component just beneath its inner surface, which makes it probable to directly couple with newly introduced curved or flexible sensor arrays . Owing to the merits of: i) high‐quality imaging with remarkable IR spectral selectivity; ii) massively integrated imaging sub‐aperture array with enlarged FoV; iii) compact and wafery structure with potential integration with arrayed sensor, such proposed IR ACE component is perspective to find applications in IR imaging and 3D positioning.…”

“…The arthropod species have developed and optimized their super sophisticated compound eye vision system over millions of years of evolution, and they provide valuable sources of inspiration to human beings to track and imitate. [1][2][3][4][5][6][7][8][9][10][11][12][13][14][15][16] Although the artificial compound eye (ACE) components in the visible light region are widely reported and some mimicking bio-vision www.advopticalmat.de…”