Human sweat-powered e-skin points to future robotics

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Human sweat-powered e-skin embedded with sensors could be used as a biosensor to monitor physiological parameters and eventually help in the development of next generation robots and medical devices.

This is the claim of Caltech's Wei Gao, assistant professor in the Andrew and Peggy Cherng department of Medical Engineering, who has developed the electronic ‘e-skin’ to be applied directly to human skin.

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Made from soft, flexible rubber, the e-skin can be embedded with sensors to monitor heart rate, body temperature, levels of blood sugar and metabolic by-products that are indicators of health. The e-skin can reportedly monitor nerve signals that control muscles and it does so by running on biofuel cells powered by human sweat. The research is detailed in Science Robotics.

"One of the major challenges with these kinds of wearable devices is on the power side," Gao said in a statement. "Many people are using batteries, but that's not very sustainable. Some people have tried using solar cells or harvesting the power of human motion, but we wanted to know, 'Can we get sufficient energy from sweat to power the wearables?' and the answer is yes."

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