Robot Skin Extends Senses

Electronic skin to give robots human-like touch
* NewScientist.com news service
* Duncan Graham-Rowe and Will Knight

Takao Someya and colleagues at the University of Tokyo in Japan embedded electronic sensors in a thin plastic film flexible enough to wrap around an egg.

The film incorporates a matrix of transistors to measure pressure and another to sense temperature. The point at which two wires intersect in each matrix provides sensor readings, with changes in current indicating fluctuations in temperature or pressure.



"It will be possible in the near future to make an electronic skin that has functions that human skin lacks," the researchers write in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

They add that future e-skin could include "sensors not only for pressure and temperature, but also for light, humidity, strain and ultrasonic” sound.

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