(KPL/Prensa Latina) American researchers at the University of Texas at Austin created the first-ever stretchy e-skin that could equip robots and other devices with the same softness and touch sensitivity as human skin, Amazings published on Monday.

This would open up new possibilities to perform tasks that require a great deal of precision and control of force.

It would also be too useful for healthcare, where robots could take a patient’s pulse, clean their body, or massage a part of their body. In addition to providing care for the elderly, robots equipped with stretchy e-skins could be used in disaster situations by treating injured people and even searching for them under the rubble, administering first aid, including, for example, cardiopulmonary resuscitation.

According to experts, the new stretchy e-skin solves an important problem with this emerging technology, since previously existing ones lose detection accuracy as the material stretches.

They explained that just as human skin has to stretch and bend to adapt to our movements, e-skin does too; Furthermore, no matter how much it is stretched, the response to pressure does not change, and that is an important achievement, they said.

In demonstrations, elasticity allowed researchers to create inflatable appendages that could change shape to perform various tasks that required high tactile sensitivity.

In swollen mode, the appendix was used on human subjects to accurately capture their pulse; while in deflated mode, the tongs can do things like hold a glass without it falling, the scientific experiment showed.

KPL