A new artificial skin could be more sensitive than the real thing

The human skin is the body’s largest organ. It also provides one of our most important senses: touch. Touch enables people to interact with and perceive objects in the external world. In building robots and virtual environments, though, touch has not been the easiest feature to translate compared to say, vision. Many labs are nonetheless trying to make touch happen, and various versions of artificial skin show promise in making electronics (like the ones powering prosthetics) smarter and more sensitive. A study out this week in the journal small presents a new type of artificial skin created by a team at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore that can not only sense direct pressure being applied on it, but also when objects are getting close to it.