Mechanoreceptor Inspired Electronic Skin for Multi-Modal Tactile Information Decoding

作者：Gao, Yuyu; Zhang, Binbin; Liu, Yiming; Yao, Kuanming; Huang, Xingcan; Li, Jian; Wong, Tsz Hung; Huang, Ya; Li, Jiyu; Zhou, Jingkun; Wu, Mengge; Li, Hu; Gao, Zhan; Park, Wooyoung; Yiu, Chun Ki; Jia, Huiling; Shi, Rui; Li, Dengfeng; Yu, Xinge^*

来源：Advanced Materials Technologies, 2023, 8(1): 2200759.

DOI：10.1002/admt.202200759

• bio-inspired
• electronic skin
• mechanoreceptors
• tactile sensors

Multimodal force identification by electronic skin (E-skin) provides comprehensive and precise tactile information that can enhance elaborated functions of fine tactile discrimination, robotic manipulation, and gesture recognition. However, it remains a great challenge to realize such complicated functions from a highly simplified E-skin sensing system. Here, mimicking the multi-mechanoreceptor synergistic effect in human skin, a simple, thin, soft, intelligent tactile sensor composed of an asymmetrically arrangement of strain sensing units array for multimodal tactile information decoding is reported. The E-skin type tactile sensor exhibits good performance with excellent sensitivity for shear force (2.5 N-1), vertical force (0.11 kPa(-1)), that enables 3D force refactoring, as well as accurate recognition of sliding force for direction tracking. Another unique feature of the E-skin type tactile sensor is the side force screen effect, that allows the tactile sensor to yield great accuracy and a gauge factor of 1492 in strain measuring. Furthermore, integration of the sensors into E-skin array offers the capability of capturing dynamic and real-time stress distribution on the hand in various conditions. This work provides a new route for complex force-sensing from the simple structure and shows great potential in robotics, human-machine interface, and virtual reality/augmented reality (VR/AR).