Droplet-sensing bionic e-skin to enhance robotic perception
Researchers at Donghua University and the National University of Singapore recently developed a new electronic skin (e-skin) that can also perceive information related to the sliding of liquids on objects
This e-skin, presented in a paper published in Nature Communications, can convert dynamic droplet sliding behaviors into electrical signals, which are then fed to an indicator.
“Our droplet e-skin (DES) is designed to enhance the ability of intelligent robots to sense droplet environments, reducing the gap between robotic e-skin and human skin in droplet perception,” says Yunlong Xu, first author of the paper. “This is because there is currently no e-skin that deeply perceives the sliding behavior of liquid droplets.”
Humans are innately capable of detecting the sliding behavior of liquid droplets on their skin, which can prove valuable when completing manual tasks in wet environments. To reproduce this capability in their e-skin, Bai and his colleagues drew inspiration from an everyday phenomenon, namely that of a soccer ball rolling on a floor tile.
“This work was mainly carried out by the team from Donghua University, with the experimental optimization and paper revision by Chengkuo Lee and Zhongda Sun from the National University of Singapore, as well as help from Zhiqing Bai with revising the paper,” Xu said. “Our e-skin is based on a triboelectric mechanism, i.e., contact electrification and electrostatic induction between the droplet and the e-skin.”
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