Electronic Skins: Can This Wearable Feel Pain Someday?

Experts said electronic skin, also known as e-skin, may be crucial to developing future prostheses, individualized medicine, soft robotics, and artificial intelligence (AI).

Electronic skin, a material that simulates human skin in strength, stretchability, and sensitivity, may be employed to gather biological data in real-time.

Electonic Skin's Future Seen

The biggest and most intricate human organ is the skin. Thousands of nerve endings that keep the brain connected to the outside world and enable us to experience touch, pressure, and pain are visible when you look at it under a microscope. However, Wired said expert Zhenan Bao saw something else.

Bao, a chemical engineer specializing in polymer production, views the skin as a sense organ and a material. She refers to one that is elastic, self-healing, and biodegradable in addition to being flexible. To replicate the various functions of human skin for application in robots and prosthetics, Bao works in the rapidly developing field of electronic skin. A sense of touch would significantly enhance the quality of life for prosthetic limbs by allowing them to discriminate between soft and hard objects and identify hot or sharp objects before they cause harm.

E-skin, also known as electronic skin, might have been used in the wearables industry, according to Bao. Imagine a gadget that can correctly assess blood pressure, temperature, glucose levels, and oxygen levels in real-time while being worn on the body like a second skin.

In the upcoming years, one idea from Stanford researcher Bao's lab may be produced and put to use in clinical trials. Bao co-founded the Silicon Valley business PyrAmes, which is creating a soft band that can be wrapped around the wrist or foot and used to check the blood pressure of preterm infants in intensive care facilities. It is intended to continually monitor blood flow, much like an arterial line would, without needing needles, which increases the risk of infection, tissue injury, and nerve damage. The band is next wirelessly coupled with a tablet to track blood pressure fluctuations in real-time.

The electronics must be stretchy and flexible from the start for these applications. With this in mind, Bao's scientists have used a molecular technique to create organic polymers. A polymer is a big molecule constructed from many monomers that repeat and are joined together like a lengthy chain of paper clips. Researchers can stretch the material and mold it to fit onto or even within the human body by altering the structure of these monomers.

According to Bao, there are several possible uses for electronic skin. However, commercialization is a long way off. She is still motivated by the thought of creating electronics that may ultimately aid in medical diagnosis and healthcare, whether in implants, wearables, or even prostheses. Her attention is also drawn to the incremental advancements and achievements made by her research team in creating distinct building components, such as sensors, circuits, and the stretchy, flexible, and biodegradable materials that go into making them.

Capable of Feeling Pain

Meanwhile, Business Insider reported earlier this year that University of Glasgow academics had proposed the creation of a printed, electronic skin that is capable of sensing pain.

The group, led by Indian Professor Ravinder Dahiya, published their findings on Science Robotics under the title "Printed Synaptic Transistors based Electronic Skin for Robots to Feel and Learn."

It's an interesting development for the subject of robotics since it allows for adaptable technology to be made. The Glasglow Bendable Electronics and Sensing Technologies (BEST) team has been investigating possible approaches for adding sensitivity to a mechanical component.

The pressure sensors of the e-skin, according to the researchers, will activate upon touch. The information from the sensors is sent to the computer to be processed as data.

Large amounts of information typically take a while to process. An electronic skin senses a delayed reaction because of this.

The Glasgow researchers developed cutting-edge artificial skin that is not based on the conventional neural system of humans to address the problem. The data is instantly processed when a contact is made after receiving input. The brain will, therefore, only get the most crucial information.

Dahiya and his colleagues employed 168 synaptic transistors, and they were positioned on top of the electronic skin. The skin sensors on the robotic hand are wired up to these transistors.

Synthetic skin serves another role, according to the same Business Insider piece. For instance, the University of Utah researchers developed the LUKE arm, a prosthetic limb that resembles a human arm and can sense human touch.

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