School of Electrical Engineering, Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST), Daejeon, 34141, Republic of Korea.
Department of Materials Science and Engineering, Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST), Daejeon, 34141, Republic of Korea.
Adv Mater. 2022 Nov;34(44):e2204805. doi: 10.1002/adma.202204805. Epub 2022 Oct 3.
Robotic skin with human-skin-like sensing ability holds immense potential in various fields such as robotics, prosthetics, healthcare, and industries. To catch up with human skin, numerous studies are underway on pressure sensors integrated on robotic skin to improve the sensitivity and detection range. However, due to the trade-off between them, existing pressure sensors have achieved only a single aspect, either high sensitivity or wide bandwidth. Here, an adaptive robotic skin is proposed that has both high sensitivity and broad bandwidth with an augmented pressure sensing ability beyond the human skin. A key for the adaptive robotic skin is a tunable pressure sensor built with uniform gallium microgranules embedded in an elastomer, which provides large tuning of the sensitivity and the bandwidth, excellent sensor-to-sensor uniformity, and high reliability. Through the mode conversion based on the solid-liquid phase transition of gallium microgranules, the sensor provides 97% higher sensitivity (16.97 kPa ) in the soft mode and 262.5% wider bandwidth (≈1.45 MPa) in the rigid mode compared to the human skin. Successful demonstration of the adaptive robotic skin verifies its capabilities in sensing a wide spectrum of pressures ranging from subtle blood pulsation to body weight, suggesting broad use for various applications.
具有类人皮肤感知能力的机器人皮肤在机器人技术、假肢、医疗保健和工业等各个领域具有巨大的潜力。为了赶上人类皮肤，正在进行大量研究将压力传感器集成到机器人皮肤中，以提高灵敏度和检测范围。然而，由于它们之间的权衡，现有的压力传感器仅在单一方面实现了高灵敏度或宽带宽。在这里，提出了一种具有高灵敏度和宽带宽的自适应机器人皮肤，其压力感应能力超过了人类皮肤。自适应机器人皮肤的关键是一种可调谐压力传感器，它由嵌入弹性体中的均匀镓微颗粒构成，可实现灵敏度和带宽的大幅调节、出色的传感器间均匀性和高可靠性。通过基于镓微颗粒固-液相转变的模式转换，与人类皮肤相比，传感器在软模式下的灵敏度提高了 97%（16.97 kPa），在硬模式下的带宽增加了 262.5%（≈1.45 MPa）。自适应机器人皮肤的成功演示验证了其在感应从微妙的血液脉动到体重等广泛压力范围内的能力，这表明它在各种应用中有广泛的用途。
