Artificial Skin

A New Breakthrough in Nano Technology- Artificial Skin

Artificial skin is a wonder bestowed from the Nano wires, which are created from a pressure sensitive material.  They are basically created from the semiconductor Nano tubes, which are even denoted as a “thin skin”. This was developed keeping the upcoming demands of robotics in mind. The skin would act as a protective sheath on the body of the robots, the same function which is performed on the human body.

The skin is going the robot to help perform various types of activities with proper grip and water proof cover that is attained through the skin. This skin is said to have a human touch and feel too it, which means the robots will hold the same sensory organs as humans have on their skin. They will be able to feel and touch using their artificial skin. It’s quite astounding because, this technology will make the robots appear just like humans because of the sedentary coat of skin that holds huge resemblance from the human skin. Researchers and postulates even show that this skin is a smart skin that will make robots just like human.

Components of Artificial Skin

Artificial skin is made from inorganic silicones and pressure sensitive material attained from the semiconductor of nanowires. Initially, developers of the skin had tried using organic material because of its ease and flexibility but it did not work the way it should have and ultimately they have to lay emphasis on this amazing inorganic skin. There are three important components that are essential for the working of this skin

• Transistors: The skin is made from at least 8 thousand transistors to bring a transparent electronic sheet which was flexible and easy to handle. This sheet was the place where the nanowires were molded with the help of zinc oxide. Without, the transistors the skin could never achieve the right texture and proper working medium.  Through these transistors, the mechanical movement and touch could be converted into signals which were later followed by the skin.
• Pressure Sensitive Rubber: This is the sensing element of the artificial skin. Just like human skin has natural sensors, the artificial one was supported by the laminated pressure sensitive rubber.  When pressure was applied on this rubber then through conductance the PSR gets moduled, which pixels out a signal. This happens only because of the electrical properties of the Pressure Sensitive Rubber.
• Force Sensor and Motor: To induce the perfect relaxation and contraction time on this e-device special time resolved force sensors and motors were used. These were fixed with a certain value so that the skin would react for that fraction of time for the applied force and then would come back to its normal shape if nothing has happened. In case of huge amount of constant pressure and force then the skin would degenerate.      

Working of Artificial Skin

The working of artificial skin is not that complicated. The skin was formulated by applying a thin layer of rubber under a discrete electrode that had stored electrical charge. Along with that, a little amount of pressure can even be detected here; this pressure when exerted on the so formed rubber skin then the electrical charge of the rubber changes, and this change is witnessed at the electrodes. Just like the normal transfer of electric charge from negative to positive, but here the transfer never takes place because the film of the skin or the rubber is so small that this unstable charges get entangled in the material itself bring the real skin like feel and reaction.

Applications of Artificial Skin

• This skin is widely used on robots to bring a human like look and feel.
• It will even be used for humans to make prosthetic limbs.
• This can even act as a sensor to enhance alarm systems.
• Can be used to create artificial derma for human.

Future of Artificial skin

Now, artificial skin is made suitable just for robots, but in this developing era this engineered structure will soon replace the so called plastic and metal that are used to replaced non-working joints of the human body. This will help the patients; relive the skin that they had earlier because the artificial ones are just a mirror of the natural skin of human body. Moreover, this skin can even be used in the reconstruction surgery that is carried out on the nose and ear of the human body. This technology will work in reshaping the medical situation of the world which is somehow lacking behind. But, the one big problem that is faced now, is that these type of skin are quite expensive compared to the usual medical procedures that are carried on the human body, so handling the price and making them cost-effective is yet another challenge for the engineers.