'Electronic skin' integrates sensors in flexible interface

The new electronic skin, or e-skin, responds to touch by instantly lighting up. The more intense the pressure, the brighter the light it emits.

‘We are not just making devices; we are building systems,’ said Javey, an associate professor of electrical engineering and computer sciences. ‘With the interactive e-skin, we have demonstrated an elegant system on plastic that can be wrapped around different objects to enable a new form of human-machine interfacing.’

This latest e-skin, described in a paper published online in Nature Materials, is said to build on Javey’s earlier work using semiconductor nanowire transistors layered on top of thin rubber sheets.

In addition to giving robots a finer sense of touch, the engineers believe the new e-skin technology could also be used to create things like wallpapers that double as touchscreen displays and dashboard laminates that allow drivers to adjust electronic controls with the wave of a hand.

‘I could also imagine an e-skin bandage applied to an arm as a health monitor that continuously checks blood pressure and pulse rates,’ said study co-lead author Chuan Wang, who conducted the work as a post-doctoral researcher in Javey’s lab at UC Berkeley.