New Electronic Skin Enhances Robot Sensitivity to Human-Level Touch

Los Angeles CA (SPX) May 06, 2024 - Researchers at The University of Texas at Austin have developed an advanced stretchable electronic skin (e-skin) that could potentially give robots and other devices human-like touch sensitivity. This innovation overcomes the limitations of existing e-skin technologies which lose sensing accuracy when stretched.

"Much like human skin has to stretch and bend to accommodate our movements, so too does e-skin," explained Nanshu Lu, a professor at the Cockrell School of Engineering. "No matter how much our e-skin stretches, the pressure response doesn't change, and that is a significant achievement."

The new e-skin could significantly enhance how robots perform tasks that require delicate touch and precise control, such as medical procedures. Lu suggests that this technology could be especially useful in healthcare, providing assistance to the elderly or in emergency situations where human intervention might not be available.

"In the future, if we have more elderly than available caregivers, it's going to be a crisis worldwide," Lu added. "We need to find new ways to take care of people efficiently and also gently, and robots are an important piece of that puzzle."

The innovative e-skin uses a hybrid response pressure sensor that combines capacitive and resistive sensing, allowing for more accurate touch and pressure measurements. This has been demonstrated in various applications, including health monitoring where it successfully captured pulse and pulse waves without errors caused by skin deformation.

The development team, led by Lu and including researchers from multiple departments at the University of Texas, is now working on integrating this e-skin into a robotic arm. They have also filed a provisional patent and are exploring commercial partnerships.

Research Report:Stretchable hybrid response pressure sensors