E-skin is soft and stretchy enough to wrap around your finger.
Jiancheng Lai and Weichen Wang/Bao Research Group/Stanford University
Patches of artificial skin can convert signals from pressure or heat sensors into brain signals. After being connected to the rat’s brain, touching this electronic skin caused the rat to kick his leg. This could potentially be used to improve prostheses for people with skin injuries.
Weichen Wang and his colleagues at Stanford University in California created a device called an e-skin out of electronic circuits and pressure and temperature sensors. They are all made from a thin, stretchy, rubber-like material. The team integrated these components into one patch of his that easily conforms to uneven surfaces such as a human finger. The E-skin works by mimicking biological skin, where nerves sense pressure or warmth and send a series of electrical signals, or “pulse trains,” to the brain.
When heat or pressure is applied, the e-skin’s sensor sends a signal to a circuit that converts the signal into a pulse train. To do all this, e-skin required up to 1/60th the voltage used in older artificial skin devices. Wang says this could mean that the e-skin doesn’t get as hot and is more comfortable to use for extended periods of time. Artificial skin, which can be used as a prosthesis for people with skin injuries, must be comfortable to wear for long periods of time.
Skin sensations can trigger rapid muscle movements, so the researchers connected electronic skins to the nervous system of living rats to see if they could do the same. The researchers connected electrodes in patches of electronic skin to areas of the brain that process touch and temperature. Then apply pressure to the device. The rat brains responded by firing more signals between neurons in areas that control movement. When the researchers sent these signals to the rat’s leg through an implantable artificial synaptic apparatus, a response occurred.
“It’s a clear demonstration. Based on the senses, there was movement. This is no small thing, and it’s a very difficult task to get electronics working well enough,” said Ravinder of Northeastern University in Massachusetts. says Dahiya. However, using e-skin instead of large areas of skin may require more sophisticated circuitry, he says.
This device sends all sensory data directly to the brain without filtering, whereas human skin does not process sensory data in this way. For example, the pressure you put on your fingertips when you hold a pen requires more attention from your brain than it does from the skin on other parts of your hand, and they’re filtered out, Dahiya says.
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