Artificial Electronic Skin

TUM-IAS Hans Fischer Senior Fellow Prof.Takao Someya (University of Tokyo) works in the Focus Group on Artificial Electronic Skin, aiming at implementation of a novel paradigm that could lead to important advances in robotics. This research pursues the creation of an artificial electronic skin that imitates the properties of human skin using innovative fabrication techniques of printed electronics. The “artificial electronic skin” concept will realize a network of fully printed unit-cells integrating printed sensors and specific integrated circuitry in order to mimic the human skin’s “sense of touch”. A large number of sensor-cells will be connected to a cell-network that determines touch information across large areas and transmits if comparably to the human nervous system. One or more cells can be connected to a processing system to interpret the sensor information and support other perception channels of a humanoid. Printed electronics offers inherent advantages to the development of an artificial skin: Mechanically flexible and even stretchable materials of large size can be utilized as a substrate to recently developed inks of electronic materials. These possess interesting properties, such high conductivity, high dielectric permittivity and tunable work functions. One of the main challenges will be the integration of these sensors on large-scale area, fulfilling mechanical requirements, stretchability and flexibility of human skin, and ensuring correct sensor performance and reproducibility. A similar architecture may be applied on prostheses as well as for health and fitness monitoring.

TUM-IAS funded postdoctoral researcher:
Dr. Pablo Lanillos, Institute for Cognitive Systems

Publication by the Focus Group

2019

  • Gordon Cheng: Towards multi-intelligences: are we there yet? - International Symposium on Machine Intelligence for Future Society 2019. 2019 mehr…
  • Gordon Cheng: End-to-end smart robot skin - Moscow - Skolkovo Robotic Forum. 2019 mehr…
  • Jiang, Zhi; Nayeem, Md Osman Goni; Fukuda, Kenjiro; Ding, Su; Jin, Hanbit; Yokota, Tomoyuki; Inoue, Daishi; Hashizume, Daisuke; Someya, Takao: Flexible Electronics: Highly Stretchable Metallic Nanowire Networks Reinforced by the Underlying Randomly Distributed Elastic Polymer Nanofibers via Interfacial Adhesion Improvement (Adv. Mater. 37/2019). Advanced Materials 31 (37), 2019, 1970265 mehr…
  • Jin, Hanbit; Nayeem, Md Osman Goni; Lee, Sunghoon; Matsuhisa, Naoji; Inoue, Daishi; Yokota, Tomoyuki; Hashizume, Daisuke; Someya, Takao: Highly Durable Nanofiber-Reinforced Elastic Conductors for Skin-Tight Electronic Textiles. ACS Nano 13 (7), 2019, 7905-7912 mehr…
  • Someya, Takao; Amagai, Masayuki: Toward a new generation of smart skins. Nature Biotechnology 37 (4), 2019, 382-388 mehr…
  • T. Someya: Skin Electronics Connecting Cyberspace to Human Body. International Meeting on Information Display (IMID) 2019, 2019 mehr…
  • T. Someya: Stretchable Nanomesh Electronics for Wearables and in vitro Characterizations. EM-NANO 2019, 2019 mehr…
  • T. Someya: “Biocompatible Nanomesh Electronics for Wearables and In Vitro Characterizations. 2019 MRS Fall Meeting & Exhibit, 2019 mehr…
  • T. Yokota, H. Jin and T. Someya: Highly Durable Elastic Conductors for Electronic Textiles. 2019 MRS Fall Meeting & Exhibit, 2019 mehr…

2018

  • Bader, Christian; Bergner, Florian; Cheng, Gordon: A Robust and Efficient Dynamic Network Protocol for a large-scale artificial robotic skin. 2018 IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS), IEEE, 2018 mehr…
  • Bergner, Florian; Dean-Leon, Emmanuel; Cheng, Gordon: Efficient Distributed Torque Computation for Large Scale Robot Skin. 2018 IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS), IEEE, 2018 mehr…
  • Dean-Leon, Emmanuel; Ramirez-Amaro, Karinne; Bergner, Florian; Dianov, Ilya; Cheng, Gordon: Integration of Robotic Technologies for Rapidly Deployable Robots. IEEE Transactions on Industrial Informatics 14 (4), 2018, 1691-1700 mehr…
  • Feng, Di; Kaboli, Mohsen; Cheng, Gordon: Active Prior Tactile Knowledge Transfer for Learning Tactual Properties of New Objects. Sensors 18 (2), 2018, 634 mehr…
  • Kaboli, Mohsen; Cheng, Gordon: Robust Tactile Descriptors for Discriminating Objects From Textural Properties via Artificial Robotic Skin. IEEE Transactions on Robotics 34 (4), 2018, 985-1003 mehr…
  • Kaboli, Mohsen; Yao, Kunpeng; Feng, Di; Cheng, Gordon: Tactile-based active object discrimination and target object search in an unknown workspace. Autonomous Robots 43 (1), 2018, 123-152 mehr…