house-of-gnar:

South Korean scientists are developing prosthetic skin that can detect heat, cold, pressure, and other sensations.

“Some high-tech prosthetic limbs can be controlled by their owners, using nerves, muscles, or even the brain. However, there’s no way for the wearer to tell if an object is scalding hot, or about to slip out of the appendage’s grasp.

Materials that detect heat, pressure, and moisture could help change this by adding sensory capabilities to prosthetics. A group of Korean and U.S. researchers have now developed a polymer designed to mimic the elastic and high-resolution sensory capabilities of real skin.

The polymer is infused with dense networks of sensors made of ultrathin gold and silicon. The normally brittle silicon is configured in serpentine shapes that can elongate to allow for stretchability. Details of the work are published today in the journal Nature Communications.

What’s more, the researchers tuned the sensors to have the right stretching ranges depending where on a hand they’d be located. They used motion-capture cameras to study how a real hand moves and stretches, and then applied varying silicon shapes to different spots on the prosthetic skin to accommodate that stretchability. Finally, in a further effort to make the materials seem more realistic, they added a layer of actuators that warm it up to roughly the same temperature as human skin.”

video, read more  here and here