Electronic skin

Whether they're in airplane wings, bridges or other critical structures, cracks can cause catastrophic failure before they're large enough to be noticed by the human eye. A strain-sensing "skin" applied to such objects could help, though, by lighting up when exposed to laser light.

​We've already heard about flexible electronic "skins" that could give robots or prosthetic limbs a human-like sense of touch. Now, however, scientists from the University of Texas at Arlington are claiming to have developed a skin that's even more touch-sensitive than our own.

Various research institutes have already developed skin-applied electronics, that are simply adhered to the user's body. Researchers at the University of Minnesota, however, have taken a different approach. They've developed a method of 3D-printing custom electronics directly onto the skin.

Researchers from the University of Colorado Boulder have developed an electronic skin embedded with a host of sensors that can be bent and twisted to custom fit its owner. If it gets damaged, the e-skin can be healed, and it can be completely recycled at the end of its useful life.​​

The latest electronic skin to cross our desk is promises greater flexibility and a more compact form than earlier solutions, by making use of an innovative spider web-patterned coil system that enables it to be bent in any direction.

Through a special organ on their snouts, pit vipers can sense the body heat of their prey. Scientists have developed an artificial skin that uses a similar mechanism​ and could allow prosthetic limbs to detect changes in temperature, or make a smart bandage that can warn of infection.

A new durable, flexing OLED display is less than one quarter the thickness of Saran wrap and can be worn on the skin to display blood-oxygen levels, with the developers working to afford it other health-monitoring too.

A Chinese team of scientists has developed a new transparent smart skin that they claim is not only cheaper to produce than previous electronic skins, but is also able to harvest mechanical energy to power itself from movement.

Microstructures in the ridges of human skin inspired a Korean team to create a stretchable artificial skin that can detect the intensity, location, and direction of pressure, whether from an object or a mere gust of wind.

An interactive electronic skin developed at Berkeley responds to pressure by instantly lighting up, and could be used to create smart bandages, wallpapers that act as a touch screen, and more sensitive robotic hands.

A newly-developed electronic finger cuff could lead to smarter surgical gloves that perform surgery and scans with a touch.

Seoul National University’s Multiscale Biomimetic Systems Laboratory has developed a new biomimetic “electronic skin” that is inexpensive, yet sensitive enough to “feel” a drop of water.