Electronic skin could help robots get in touch with their feelings

A new type of energy-generating synthetic skin could create more affordable prosthetic limbs and robots capable of mimicking the sense of touch, scientists say. In an early-view paper published in the journal IEEE Transactions on Robotics , researchers from the University of Glasgow describe how a robotic hand wrapped in their flexible solar skin is capable of interacting with objects without using dedicated and expensive touch sensors. Instead, the skin puts the array of miniaturised solar cells integrated on its soft polymer surface to a clever dual use. The cells generate enough energy to power the micro-actuators which control the hand's movements, but they also provide the hand with its unique sense of 'touch' by measuring the variations in the solar cells' output. As objects get closer to the surface of a cell, they reduce the amount of light which reaches it. The amount of power the cell generates drops as the light gets dimmer, eventually reaching zero when an object touches and covers it. By making clever interpretations of the levels of power produced in each cell, the skin is capable of detecting the shape of an incoming object.