A new milestone by engineers at UC Berkeley can help robots become more touchy-feely, literally.
A research team led by Ali Javey, UC Berkeley associate professor of electrical engineering and computer sciences, has created the first user-interactive sensor network on flexible plastic. The new electronic skin, or e-skin, responds to touch by instantly lighting up. The more intense the pressure, the brighter the light it emits.
“We are not just making devices; we are building systems,” said Javey, who also has an appointment as a faculty scientist at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. “With the interactive e-skin, we have demonstrated an elegant system on plastic that can be wrapped around different objects to enable a new form of human-machine interfacing.”
Shown is a 16-by-16 pixel interactive e-skin created by UC Berkeley engineers. Organic LEDs light up when touched. (Photo by Ali Javey and Chuan Wang)
Read also:
Robotic Skin Lights Up When Touched (Wired)
Pressure-Sensing Electronic “Skin” (MIT Technology Review)
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