Electronic skin: from flexibility to a sense of touch

Sanderson, Katharine

doi:10.1038/d41586-021-00739-z

Cited by 91 publications

(49 citation statements)

References 12 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…[51,261,262] 3) The applications in giant machinery, such as, aerospace, including smart load-bearing and anti-impact structures, [1,27,46,181,263] morphing airfoils, [264] acoustic stealth cloaks, [48,[225][226][227] elastic mechanical cloaks, [48] reconfigurable antenna, [24,180,265,266] terahertz metadevices, [267] electromagnetic stealth system. [268][269][270] 4) The applications in biomedicine include electronic skin, [258,[271][272][273][274][275] tissue engineering, [192,194,[276][277][278][279][280] vascular stents, [54,136,[281][282][283] drug delivery carriers. [136,210,284,285] From the above discussion, the rich functions and application value of AMMs have brought great convenience to human production and life.…”

Section: Practical Applications Of Active Mechanical Metamaterialsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…[ 51 , 261 , 262 ] 3) The applications in giant machinery, such as, aerospace, including smart load‐bearing and anti‐impact structures, [ 1 , 27 , 46 , 181 , 263 ] morphing airfoils, [ 264 ] acoustic stealth cloaks, [ 48 , 225 , 226 , 227 ] elastic mechanical cloaks, [ 48 ] reconfigurable antenna, [ 24 , 180 , 265 , 266 ] terahertz metadevices, [ 267 ] electromagnetic stealth system. [ 268 , 269 , 270 ] 4) The applications in biomedicine include electronic skin, [ 258 , 271 , 272 , 273 , 274 , 275 ] tissue engineering, [ 192 , 194 , 276 , 277 , 278 , 279 , 280 ] vascular stents, [ 54 , 136 , 281 , 282 , 283 ] drug delivery carriers. [ 136 , 210 , 284 ,…”

Section: Functions and Practical Applications Of Active Mechanical Metamaterialsmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 1 more Smart Citation

Recent Progress in Active Mechanical Metamaterials and Construction Principles

et al. 2021

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Active mechanical metamaterials (AMMs) (or smart mechanical metamaterials) that combine the configurations of mechanical metamaterials and the active control of stimuli-responsive materials have been widely investigated in recent decades. The elaborate artificial microstructures of mechanical metamaterials and the stimulus response characteristics of smart materials both contribute to AMMs, making them achieve excellent properties beyond the conventional metamaterials. The micro and macro structures of the AMMs are designed based on structural construction principles such as, phase transition, strain mismatch, and mechanical instability. Considering the controllability and efficiency of the stimuli-responsive materials, physical fields such as, the temperature, chemicals, light, electric current, magnetic field, and pressure have been adopted as the external stimuli in practice. In this paper, the frontier works and the latest progress in AMMs from the aspects of the mechanics and materials are reviewed. The functions and engineering applications of the AMMs are also discussed. Finally, existing issues and future perspectives in this field are briefly described. This review is expected to provide the basis and inspiration for the follow-up research on AMMs.

show abstract

Section: Practical Applications Of Active Mechanical Metamaterialsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Functions and Practical Applications Of Active Mechanical Metamaterialsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Recent Progress in Active Mechanical Metamaterials and Construction Principles

et al. 2021

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…In addition, robot skin should remain functional while being subject to physical harm to guarantee continuous sensory feedback for safe robotic motor outputs and instant decision making, which is also an important capability of human skin [188]. On top of that, robot skin will not be purely biological devices but a hybrid integration that combines the best features of polymer chemistry and bioengineering [197], [198]. However, advanced materials technologies have the potential to be harmful and bio-incompatible.…”

Section: Long-term Durability and Inherent Harmlessnessmentioning

confidence: 99%

Review of Robot Skin: A Potential Enabler for Safe Collaboration, Immersive Teleoperation, and Affective Interaction of Future Collaborative Robots

Pang

Yang

Pang

2021

IEEE Trans. Med. Robot. Bionics

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

The emerging applications of collaborative robots (cobots) are spilling out from product manufactories to service industries for human care, such as patient care for combating the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic and in-home care for coping with the aging society. There are urgent demands on equipping cobots with safe collaboration, immersive teleoperation, affective interaction, and other features (e.g., energy autonomy and self-learning) to make cobots capable of these application scenarios. Robot skin, as a potential enabler, is able to boost the development of cobots to address these distinguishing features from the perspective of multimodal sensing and self-contained actuation. This review introduces the potential applications of cobots for human care together with those demanded features. In addition, the explicit roles of robot skin in satisfying the escalating demands of those features on inherent safety, sensory feedback, natural interaction, and energy autonomy are analyzed. Furthermore, a comprehensive review of the recent progress in functionalized robot skin in components level, including proximity, pressure, temperature, sensory feedback, and stiffness tuning, is presented. Results show that the codesign of these sensing and actuation functionalities may enable robot skin to provide improved safety, intuitive feedback, and natural interfaces for future cobots in human care applications. Finally, open challenges and future directions in the real implementation of robot skin and its system synthesis are presented and discussed.

show abstract

“…[1][2][3] In addition, as the pandemic of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID- 19), it is highly desirable to accelerate the development of wearable devices to support noncontact measurements and long-distance operations for patients. [4,5] Ideally, a wearable device should resemble the natural skin as closely as possible, possessing properties like flexibility, stretchability, self-healing, and biodegradability, [2,[6][7][8] demanding continuous investigations of materials design and device manufacture. [1,[9][10][11] Particularly, as the largest organ of the human body, skin is a soft living matter, with stretchability of %75% and a modulus ranging from tens to hundreds kPa.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Highly Stretchable Starch Hydrogel Wearable Patch for Electrooculographic Signal Detection and Human–Machine Interaction

Wan

et al. 2021

Small Structures

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

It is crucial to prepare wearable devices with high stretchability to reduce the mechanical mismatch when attached to the skin. Recently, pure polysaccharide‐based hydrogels have been intensively focused on due to the living matter‐like softness, abundance, inherent biocompatibility, complete biodegradability, and renewability. However, it remains a significant challenge to achieve pure polysaccharide‐based hydrogels with high stretchability. Herein, a facile strategy is presented to synthesize a highly stretchable hydrogel wearable patch by integrating the starch (from lotus rhizome) as skeleton and sodium chloride as the electrolyte, exhibiting several advantages such as low modulus (≈4.4 kPa), broad stretching range (0≈790%), high ionic conductivity (10 S m−1), high linearity (0.996, 0≈300%), and good reproducibility (>1000 cycles). Surprisingly, both stretchability and softness have surpassed those of other pure polysaccharide‐based hydrogels reported in the literature. Furthermore, the combination of the adhesion, the low modulus, and stretchability can realize conformal attachment to different kinds of uneven objects, including the skin. Based on these properties, an electrooculographic (EOG) signal acquisition system and a relevant prototype video game using starch hydrogel patches are designed, exhibiting great potential in EOG signals monitoring as well as human–machine interaction. Moreover, other functions such as biocompatibility and biodegradability are demonstrated.

show abstract

Electronic skin: from flexibility to a sense of touch

Abstract: Flexible circuits inspired by human skin offer options for health monitoring, prosthetics and pressure-sensing robots. By Katharine Sanderson A soft, flexible device worn on the throat continuously measures and interprets coughing and breathing rates in people with COVID-19.

Cited by 91 publications

References 12 publications

Recent Progress in Active Mechanical Metamaterials and Construction Principles

Recent Progress in Active Mechanical Metamaterials and Construction Principles

Review of Robot Skin: A Potential Enabler for Safe Collaboration, Immersive Teleoperation, and Affective Interaction of Future Collaborative Robots

Highly Stretchable Starch Hydrogel Wearable Patch for Electrooculographic Signal Detection and Human–Machine Interaction

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About