Available Technology
Soft artifical skin with multi-modal sensing capabilities
Technology:
Hyperelastic sensors for complex, deformable surfaces
Markets Addressed
This material is the only approach for highly deformable sensing. High potential applications include medical devices, robotic sensing, gaming, biomedical rehabilitation, sports active wear and military gear. Hyperelastic strain sensors can also be applied in several areas such as haptics, humanoid robotics, and medical robotics. These sensors, due to their high mechanical compliance and their amenability to complex form factors (shapes), can be used for tactile sensing on humanoid robots and medical devices with complex morphologies (surfaces with high curvature or roughness). This technology has a much higher strain capacity that conventional sensor technologies (e.g. capacitive sensors), is inexpensive to manufacture, and can be made biocompatible.
In addition to applications in existing markets, this invention also has applications in several nascent markets including flexible and wearable computing (keypads, remote device controls, wearable gaming devices), sports gear and clinical-grade orthotics (“smart” pressure and strain sensing orthopedic braces or pads), tactile and motion sensors for robotics and advanced human computer interfaces (palpation for medical robots, motion capture systems), and humanoid robotics and prostheses (tactile sensation and contact localization for robotic hands, artificial skin).
Innovations and Advantages
Soft artificial skin is a highly deformable, conformal material that senses pressure and strain. Represents a new class of materials embedding function (sensing, actuation, communication, etc) in soft materials. The hyperelastic sensor fabrication process uses novel soft lithography to create flexible sensors on an unprecedented scale (sub-millimeter features), allowing much higher spatial resolution than available in current products. This mold-based manufacturing process for these sensors is also scalable and allows for multilayered sensor packages that increase sensitivity and accommodate multiple sensing modes, including axial strain, force, and pressure. Hyperelastic sensors offer a strain capacity of up to 900%, much high than conventional sensor technologies (e.g. capacitive sensors, fiber optic strain sensors), is inexpensive to manufacture, can be made biocompatible, and conformable to complex, deformable surfaces (e.g. surface of human arm, finger, etc.).
Additional Information
Related to case HU4232
Publication:
Soft Artificial Skin with Multi-Modal Sensing Capability Using Embedded Liquid Conductors
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Inventor(s):
Chen, Bor-Rong
Majidi, Carmel S.
Menguc, Yigit
Nagpal, Radhika
Park, Yong Lae
Stirling, Leia A.
Walsh, Conor James
Wood, Robert J.
Young, Diana
Categories:
For further information, please contact:
Sam Liss, Director of Business Development
(617) 495-4371
Reference Harvard Case #4231