stretchy artificial skin lets prosthetic hand sense heat,...

26/12/14 13:11Stretchy Artificial Skin Lets Prosthetic Hand Sense Heat, Humidity, and Pressure | Popular Science

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Artificial SkinArtificial Skin Kim et al./NatureCommunications

HEALTH

STRETCHY ARTIFICIAL SKIN LETSPROSTHETIC HAND SENSE HEAT,HUMIDITY, AND PRESSUREIT'S SO SOPHISTICATED, IT CAN EVEN TELL THE DIFFERENCEBETWEEN A DRY AND SOGGY DIAPER

By Sarah Fecht Posted December 9, 2014

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Prosthetic limbs that can be controlledby an amputee’s thoughts or musclemovements already exist. But what ifthey could also sense the environmentand then send that information back tothe amputee’s nervous system?

In order to create prosthetics that canfunction more like real body parts,scientists are designing artificial skinsthat pick up on tactile information. Sofar, these skins have gotten very good atsensing pressure—in fact, a skindesigned by Stanford engineers is 1,000times more sensitive than human skin.Another is self-healing.

But a new skin built by researchers inSouth Korea may be the smartestartificial skin yet. It’s stretchy, like realskin, and it can sense pressure,temperature, and humidity. It even hasa built-in heater so it feels like livingtissue. The researchers tested theartificial skin on a prosthetic hand, andthey hope that some day, it will interfacewith a patient’s nerves so amputees canfeel everything the fake skin feels.

“For prostheticdevices andartificial skin tofeel natural, theirtemperature

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“The prosthetic hand and laminatedelectronic skin could encounter manycomplex operations such as handshaking, keyboard tapping, ballgrasping, holding a cup of hot or colddrink, touching dry or wet surfaces andhuman to human contact,” they write inthe paper, which was published today inNature Communications.

The bulk of the new skin is composed ofa flexible, transparent silicone materialcalled polydimethylsiloxane -- or PDMS.Embedded within it are siliconnanoribbons that generate electricitywhen they're squished or stretched,providing a source of tactile feedback.They can also sense whether an objectis hot or cold.

The humidity sensors are made up ofcapacitors. When the polymersurrounding a capacitor absorbs water,the moisture changes the polymer'sability to store a charge. The capacitorsmeasure that storage change and use itto determine the moisture levels of theenvironment.

profile must becontrolled tomatch that of thehuman body.”

http://nature.com/articles/doi:10.1038/ncomms6747



Diaper TestDiaper Test

Humidity sensors in the artificial skin wereable to distinguish between wet and drydiapers.

Kim et al./NatureCommunications

The researchers tested the humiditysensors in a somewhat unconventionalway. First, they compared the artificialskin's humidity readings to themeasurements of a commercialhumidity sensor, and the resultsmatched up pretty well. That's normalprotocol. But just to be extrascientifically rigorous, the researchershad the prosthetic hand prod variousdiapers, and it turned out it was able todistinguish between wet and drydiapers. Success!

Next came the heating element.

“For prosthetic devices and artificial skinto feel natural, their temperature profilemust be controlled to match that of thehuman body,” the authors write.Thermal actuators control how muchheat the artificial skin emits. Andalthough there are very simple ways tomeasure whether or not the skin



maintains a steady 98 degreesFahrenheit, the researchers preferred toplace the hand on a plastic baby doll(hopefully it was washed after touchingthose soggy diapers) and thenmeasured the amount of heat the handtransferred to the doll. It was within thenormal human range.

Zhenan Bao, an artificial skin engineerat Stanford, who was not involved in thenew paper, called the work exciting. Shesaid that although the authors havecreated artificial skins with temperature,pressure, and humidity sensors before,integrating it with the stretchy substrateis novel.

By adjusting the shape of the siliconnanoribbon patterns, the researcherscan adjust how stretchy the skin is. Forregions where the skin doesn't need tostretch, such as the fingertips, thenanoribbons are packed in a tight linearpattern to maximize sensitivity. Forareas like the wrist, which need moreflexibility, the nanoribbons form a moreloopy pattern, allowing for more roomto expand by up to 16 percent.

“This is an important demonstration ofthe applications of stretchableelectronics,” said Bao.

The team is still working out the bestway to get the sensory information fromthe artificial skin to the brain of theamputee. They did manage to transferpressure information from the skin into



the brain of a rat, but the papercautions that the method may not besafe to use in people.

At the very least, perhaps this inventionwill fulfill every parent’s dream: Diaper-changing robots.

TAGS:TAGS: PROSTHETICS, NEUROPROSTHETICS ,ARTIFICIAL SKIN, BIONICS, ROBOTS, HEALTH,EDITOR'S PICKS

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stretchy artificial skin lets prosthetic hand sense heat,...

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