Human civilization achieves a great victory when solar-powered synthetic skin can feel the sensation more than a human hand. Modern science brings a great breakthrough for the prostheses.
Scientists have recently invented a completely different kind of synthetic skin that can feel the touch sensitivity. The key aim behind this revelation is to develop a better prosthetic hand to provide more comforts for the amputees. Mirror reported that the researchers use the "wonder material" graphene to complete this great work.
Graphene contains some unique features. The "wonder material" is transparent and stronger than the steel. Engineers at the University of Glasgow have covered the prosthetic hands with the synthetic skin. The users of this prosthetic hand can measure the pressure of the sensitivity.
The key benefit of the users is they can easily perform works like gripping soft materials. It is difficult to perform any easy task by a normal prosthetic hand. In a word, researchers have uniquely designed a robotic skin that can perform works and feel the sense. After inventing a prosthetic hand with the synthetic skin, researchers may now attempt to create prosthetic limbs with the power of sensitivity.
Wiley Online Library reported the key fact about the synthetic skin through the Advanced Functional Materials. Dr. Ravinder Dahiya, a key personality from the University of Glasgow's School of Engineering, utters some significant words about this project. He reveals that human skin can feel the temperature, pressure and the texture through the neural sensors that ultimately send signals to the brain.
Creating a synthetic skin is now a possible task, but powering the system is a difficult job to perform. Dr. Ravinder Dahiya says that graphene's optical transparency helps to gather energy from the sun and to generate power. The research team has integrated photovoltaic cells into the electronic skin to generate the power.
The synthetic skin needs only 20nanowatts per square centimeter to perform all necessary works. The engineers are now facing a new challenge to create an option to store the power. If the excess and unused energy can be stored then it can be very helpful to perform essential works later.
