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Professor Takao Someya, Professor of Department of Electrical and Electronic Engineering at the University of Tokyo, gave a lecture on November 16, 2016 titled “Bionic skins with ulraflexible organic devices”.

One decade ago, Prof. Someya's research group created a flexible, organic electronic mesh and wrapped it around the mechanical bones of a robotic hand. They had dreamed of making an electronic skin, embedded with temperature and pressure sensors, that could be worn by a robot. If a robotic health aide shook hands with a human patient, they thought, this sensor-clad e-skin would be able to measure some of the person’s vital signs at the same time. Today they’re working intensively on e-skin, but their focus is now on applying it directly to the human body. Such a bionic skin could be used to monitor medical conditions or to provide more sensitive and lifelike prosthetics. But whether they’re building e-skin for robots or people, the underlying technological challenges are the same. Today’s rigid electronics aren’t a good fit with soft human bodies. Creating an electronic skin that can curve around an elbow or a knee requires a thin material that can flex and even stretch without destroying its conductive properties. Large sheets of this stuff with enough sensors embedded to mimic, at least roughly, the sensitivity of human skin are needed to be done economically. The research group thinks that’s a tall order, and they’re not there yet. But ultimately, Prof. Someya thinks engineers will succeed in making e-skins that give people some amazing new abilities.