Symposium SB03—Robotic Materials for Advanced Machine Intelligence

Binbin Ying, Massachusetts Institute of Technology

An Anti-Freezing, Ambient-Stable and Highly Stretchable Ionic Skin with Strong Surface Adhesion for Wearable Sensing and Soft Robotics

Written by Corrisa Heyes

iSkin, a hydrogel-base ionic skin, is a flexible, stretchable, tough, strain sensor able to operate at temperatures down to -95°C and in humidity conditions ranging from 15-90%. iSkin has strong surface adhesion capabilities, as demonstrated by applications on human skin, textiles, and soft robots. Examples of these applications showed wearable gait-measurement sensing, smart winter coat strain sensing, and a stretchable electronic glove for human-machine interfacing. Future work on improving fabrication methods will allow for more complex sensing capabilities and possibly the development of microsensor arrays. Ultimately, such systems might be used to develop robots with sensor capabilities approaching, or even surpassing, human touch senses.