New intrinsically stretchable electronic skin (“e-skin”) based
proprioception system capable of providing accurate, high-resolution,
real-time and full-geometry characterisation of a soft object’s shape
and position.
This technology allows the determination of a soft object’s movement, action, location and touch area, enabling the precise control, operability, and practical implementation of soft robots and other soft systems.
Application
Development Status
Prototype demonstrator and results
IP Status
International (PCT) patent application PCT/GB2023/050720
Commercial Offering
Opportunity
Soft devices, and in particular soft robots, offer ground-breaking approaches to address technological challenges for which conventional rigid systems are simply unfit. These include surgical robotics, compliant prostheses, industrial processes and wearable technologies.
Soft systems offer intrinsically safer and more life-like interactions, however, their conformable structure also makes their characterisation difficult and limits the determination of an object’s movement, action, location and the sense of environment (so-called 3-dimensional perception) which is essential for controllability and operability required for the practical implementation of such innovations.
To overcome this, University of Edinburgh researchers have developed a new 3D-perception system that enables real-time, high-accuracy three-dimensional, full-geometry shape reconstruction and tactile sensing suitable for use with soft robots and other soft systems.
Technology
The Edinburgh technology is underpinned by a new capacitive ‘e-skin’ design in combination with an innovative deep-learning methodology. Our solution provides real-time (30 fps), high accuracy (mm-scale error), and full-geometry shape reconstruction of dense point clouds of 3D-geometries under complex multimodal deformations (i.e. bending, twisting, elongation and their combinations). The e-skin can also provide touch recognition from the e-skin signals. This represents a major advancement over existing approaches for soft robot perception that is limited to sparse geometrical inference under one or two prescribed types of deformations or only tactile sensing.
The Edinburgh e-skin technology is intrinsically stretchable, and scalable and can be deployed either as an integral component of a product or as an external layer applied to the surface of the object. With a rapid training pipeline which is agnostic of the soft object’s shape, size and geometry, the technology can be readily deployed with any soft device where 3D-perception is desirable.
Benefits
Publication
Yang, Y. et al. Stretchable e-skin and transformer enable high-resolution morphological reconstruction for soft robots. Nat Mach Intell 5, 261–272 (2023).
https://doi.org/10.1038/s42256-023-00622-8
Quote: TEC1104397
Edinburgh researchers have developed smart electronic skin that could pave the way for soft, flexible robotic devices to assist with surgical procedures or aid people’s mobility. The scientists say their stretchable e-skin gives robots for the first time a level of physical self-awareness similar to that of people and animals.
Senior Technology Transfer Manager
School of Engineering
