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Dec 2, 2020

Energy-generating synthetic skin for affordable prosthetic limbs and touch-sensitive robots

Posted by in categories: biotech/medical, cyborgs, robotics/AI, solar power

A new type of energy-generating synthetic skin could create more affordable prosthetic limbs and robots capable of mimicking the sense of touch, scientists say.

In an early-view paper published in the journal IEEE Transactions on Robotics, researchers from the University of Glasgow describe how a wrapped in their flexible solar is capable of interacting with objects without using dedicated and expensive .

Instead, the skin puts the array of miniaturized integrated on its soft polymer surface to a clever dual use. The cells generate enough energy to power the micro-actuators which control the hand’s movements, but they also provide the hand with its unique sense of ‘touch’ by measuring the variations in the solar cells’ output.

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