admin There are now skin-like phone cases that retort to being pinched and tickled.
From Telecom Paris in France, Marc Teyssier and his colleagues has invented an artificial skin for interactive devices that responds to touch. The skin is smart enough to detect a variety of signs, including sliding, stretching and rotation.
“I wanted to pinch my phone,” says Teyssier as the reason for designing the skin. The skin also responds to different motions that simulates human emotional communication.
According to certain emotions to associate different gestures, this artificial skin is programmed. Anger and tapping is a means of seeking attention with an abrupt hard pressure on the skin, while comfort can be associated with unrelenting contact and caressing.
Two prototypes are designed by the team out of which one with a creepily realistic textured layer that resembles human skin and another with a more uniform surface.
Out of three layes of the artificial, one consisting of a layer of stretchable copper wire sandwiched between two layers of silicone. Pressure on the skin changes the electric charge of the system.
The most challenging part of this research was developing the sensor, enuciated Teyssier.
He further added “The constraint was to develop something that was stretchable and that can also detect touch,”
This research team as of now created three models to demonstrate how the artificial skin works, which includes a phone case, computer touch pad and smart watch.At the ACM Symposium on User Interface Software and Technology in New Orleans, US, this work will be presented this week. The next step is to make the skin more realistic, including with embedded hair and temperature features. Earlier to this research, Teyssier has designed a robotic finger which enables smartphones to crawl across a table.
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