Skin: I don’t have melon in the rain, it is the first move of the R&D staff!

Editor’s note: This article is from WeChat public account “Big Data Digest” (ID: BigDataDigest), author Niu Yan Yang.

Tick your phone: Paris Telecom puts on

After a while, the “artificial skin phone case” you heard?

In fact, it is not a real mobile phone case, but an artificial skin developed by researchers from the University of Bristol, France Sorbonne and Paris Telecom, wrapped in a smart phone, laptop touch Interactive experiments on boards and smart watches for computer-mediated communication with people or virtual characters.

In fact, the development of artificial skin is to better study the tactile interaction and take the interaction technology to a new level.

After face recognition, voice assistant, and beautification, you may have a “tactile” on your mobile phone someday.

Tactile smart device

The idea of ​​using artificial skin for mobile phone cases comes from MarcTeyssier, a staff member of Paris Telecom, who developed “Skin-OnInterfaces” in collaboration with researchers at the University of Bristol and the Sorbonne to mimic the appearance of human skin. It also has a perceptual resolution.

This artificial skin not only has the touch and smoothness of human skin, but the coating also looks like real skin, and has been programmed to respond to human touch, such as pinching, stamping, scratching Itchy and so on.

Tick your phone: Paris Telecom puts on

This artificial skin is composed of a multilayer silicone film to mimic the layers present in human skin. It consists of a “dermis layer”, an electrode layer and a “subcutaneous layer”, and the middle electrode layer is a sensor composed of a plurality of extremely thin wires overlapping. Therefore, it can have the touch of human skin and can “feel” to the user.The grip, and can detect interactions such as scratching, caressing, and even pinching and twisting.

Tick your phone: Paris Telecom puts on

Tick your phone: Paris Telecom puts on

Dr. Anne Roudaut, associate professor of human-computer interaction at the University of Bristol, said that this was the first time they thought of adding skin to an interactive device. Although the idea is “big brains,” project sponsor MarcTeyssier believes that human skin is the best interactive carrier, why not use it to enrich the performance of the device? The Teyssier team wants to enable electronic devices with a layer of skin to provide users with a new form of interaction.

In the artificial skin demonstration of the laptop touchpad, when the experimenter “pinched” it, the “virtual person” on the computer screen would frown like a real person, as if it felt pain.

Tick your phone: Paris Telecom puts on

When touching the artificial skin “mobile phone case”, the kittens on the screen of the mobile phone blinked and moved their ears, as if they felt the caress of the owner.

Tick your phone: Paris Telecom puts on

In addition, developers such as Teyssier have successfully created an application that can use tactile delivery of messages, allowing users to express rich “tactile emotions” on artificial skin. A strong pinch can convey anger, a smile will be sent when scratching, and a tap will produce a surprising expression.

Give your handTickling: Paris Telecom puts on “skin” for electronic devices, and caressing and responding to face can respond” src=

Teyssier said on the project’s website, “We can communicate our own emotions through artificial skin and interact with others in the form of sending expressions. However, using people like smartphones to communicate with others, people There is still a cold screen between them, it is difficult to achieve natural interaction.”

Next interaction scenario: Make electronic devices more anthropomorphic

Everything has just begun. As far as the Teyssier team is concerned, R&D personnel will further study how to better “personalize” electronic devices. These existing haptic devices may soon become a standard, and developers such as Teyssier are inviting for “Skin- OnInterfaces” interested developers join their team.

The next step will make artificial skin more realistic, and they have begun to study how to embed hair and temperature features into artificial skin, which sounds really scalp~

Teyssier also hopes that artificial skin can be linked to the user’s emotions. Just as human beings will clench their fists when they are angry, they will tickle their skin when they are bored. The single-handed machine also has the difference of “light grip” and “grip”. Can they be recognized by the sensor and then pointed to a specific function? This is also within the scope of the R&D team’s consideration. (full body 3DTouch?)

Tick your phone: Paris Telecom puts on

At present, there are many artificial intelligence technologies that fill our lives, and these technologies seem to be more approachable. From another perspective, however, the electronics we use every day in the future may be more like “we”.

Exploration of artificial skin

Artificial skin or assistive medical industry

In September 2017, a group of researchers at the University of Houston in the United States published a paper in the journal Science Advances, stating that artificial skin can be used to make robotic hands aware of the difference between hot and cold.

Thesis link:

https://advances.sciencemag.Org/content/3/9/e1701114

Tick your phone: Paris Telecom puts on

The artificial skin created by the team is a stretchable composite semiconductor made from a rubber composite called polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) and a silver nanowire with a protective coating. The solution can be hardened into a material that uses nanowires to carry current.

Tick your phone: Paris Telecom puts on

For this study, artificial skin is just one of them. Researchers foresee that this soft, flexible, stretchable new material will affect the future development of flexible electronic devices in many fields, such as medical applications, for health monitoring, medical implants and surgical gloves.

The future may benefit burn patients and prosthetic users

In February 2019, researchers from the United States and Canada jointly developed an artificial skin designed to allow burn patients and prosthetic users to “feel” the world.

This is another sensor made of new materials. Researchers such as AbdelsalamAhmed published a study in AdvancedMaterials, saying that the sensor composed of nanoparticles can be monitored from the outside world. Pressure, magnetic fields and sound waves and other abnormal conditions, and correspondingly produce different current changes.

Thesis link:

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1002/adma.201807201

The research team at the University of Connecticut and the University of Toronto in Canada used a silicone tube wrapped in copper wire filled with special liquids of iron oxide particles that are only a billionth of a metre in size. The internal friction of the tube generates current, and the external copper wire can capture these current signals.

Tick your phone: Paris Telecom puts on the

The different pressures generated by different actions such as walking, running, jumping, etc., will cause different current changes when they are transmitted to the silicone tube. Therefore, the researchers hope that the equipment can help the burned patients and the prosthetic users to re-sensing the external environmental stimuli, and Alerts to possible magnetic field radiation for people working in high magnetic fields.

Tick your phone: Paris Telecom puts

It can be seen that the researcher is full of curiosity about the future of artificial skin, and the exploration will continue. How much can it be similar to our skin in the future? How many “likes” can those electronic devices be with us?

Related reports:

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2019/10/191020084939.htm

https://phys.org/news/2019-10-case-human-skin.html

http://www.uh.edu/news-events/stories/2017/september/09132017Yu-Stretchy-Electronics.php