Artifificial Robot 'Skin' Could Create the Feeling of Touch and Other Sensations

People may be able to feel with artificial, robotic skin. Researchers have created a plastic "skin" that can detect how hard it's being pressed and generate an electric signal to delivery this sensory input to a living brain cell.

The skin itself was designed for prosthetic limbs. In theory, it can cover a limb and then send impulses to the brain of the individual with the prosthetic, replicating some of the skin's sensory functions.

"This is the first time a flexible, skin-like material has been able to detect pressure and also transmit a signal to a component of the previous system," said Zhenan Bao, one of the researchers, in a news release.

The skin itself consists of a two-ply plastic construct. The top layer creates a sensing mechanism and the bottom layer acts as the circuit to transport electrical signals and translate them into biochemical stimuli compatible with nerve cells. The top layer in the skin also features a sensor that can detect pressure over the same range as human skin.

But how does the skin sense things? In order to exploit the pressure-sensing capability electronically, the researchers scattered billions of carbon nanotubes through the plastic of the skin, which is in a waffle pattern to increase natural pressure sensitivity. Putting pressure on the plastic squeezes the nanotubes closer together and enables them to conduct electricity. This allowed the plastic sensor to mimic human skin.

The researchers hooked this pressure sensing mechanism to the second ply of their artificial skin-a flexible electronic circuit that could carry pulses of electricity to nerve cells.

"We have a lot of work to take this from experiment to practical applications," said Bao. "But after spending many years in this work, I now see a clear path where we can take our artificial skin."

The findings are published in the journal Science.

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