Mechanoreceptor Inspired Electronic Skin for Multi-Modal Tactile Information Decoding

Multimodal force identification by electronic skin (E-skin) provides comprehensive and precise tactile information that can enhance elaborated functions of fine tactile discrimination, robotic manipulation, and gesture recognition. However, it remains a great challenge to realize such complicated functions from a highly simplified E-skin sensing system. Here, mimicking the multi-mechanoreceptor synergistic effect in human skin, a simple, thin, soft, intelligent tactile sensor composed of an asymmetrically arrangement of strain sensing units array for multimodal tactile information decoding is reported. The E-skin type tactile sensor exhibits good performance with excellent sensitivity for shear force (2.5 N^–1), vertical force (0.11 kPa^–1), that enables 3D force refactoring, as well as accurate recognition of sliding force for direction tracking. Another unique feature of the E-skin type tactile sensor is the side force screen effect, that allows the tactile sensor to yield great accuracy and a gauge factor of 1492 in strain measuring. Furthermore, integration of the sensors into E-skin array offers the capability of capturing dynamic and real-time stress distribution on the hand in various conditions. This work provides a new route for complex force-sensing from the simple structure and shows great potential in robotics, human-machine interface, and virtual reality/augmented reality (VR/AR).