14 DAY TRIAL // Electronic skins aren’t new to the IT world. These are electronic materials which are like human skin in many ways, but now with much more properties added to it.
Among changing colors and acting like portable displays, or having heating abilities for thermal control, Korean researchers managed to add it a “smelling” property together with detecting human touch. There have been many previous attempts to build an e-skin which is closest to the human organ; however, of all attempts this new design gets the closest to achieving this goal.
The researchers at Global Frontier Program of MSIP, they have arrived at a “smelling” e-skin, which not only features tactile sense but also olfactory sense. This e-skin was built with hierarchically engineered elastic carbon nanotube microyarns can simultaneously detect biological and tactile stimuli, just like the human skin.
Not only can this new development help robots have a flexible electronic skin like humans do, but they can also smell things around them and perceive tactile stimuli just like people. However, a closer and more achievable application for this e-skin is having flexible displays with more properties than those before. Beyond that, medical applications will find this new development extremely useful when rebuilding human skin or performing skin grafts in case of accidents or extreme burns.