Early Adaptor

Japanese Researchers Develop "Robot Skin"

Japanese researchers say they have developed a rubber that is able to conduct electricity well, paving the way for robots with stretchable “e-skin” that can feel heat and pressure like humans. The material is the first in the world to solve the problems faced by metals - which are conductive but do not stretch - and rubber, which hardly transmits electricity, according to the team at the University of Tokyo. The new technology is flexible like ordinary rubber but boasts conductivity some 570 times as high as commercially available rubbers filled with carbon particles, said the team led by Takao Someya at the university’s School of Engineering. If used as wiring, the material can make elastic integrated circuits (ICs), which can be stretched to up to 1.7 times their original size and mounted on curved surfaces with no mechanical damage or major change in conductivity. One application of the material would be artificial skin on robots, said Tsuyoshi Sekitani, a research associate in the team.
Scientists develop skin for robots