Towards the integration of e-skin into prosthetic devices

• Published in: 2016 12th Conference on Ph.D. Research in Microelectronics and Electronics (PRIME) pp. 1 - 4
• Main Authors: Franceschi, Marta, Seminara, Lucia, Pinna, Luigi, Valle, Maurizio, Ibrahim, Ali, Dosen, Strahinja
• Format: Conference Proceeding
• Language: English
• Published: IEEE 01.06.2016
• Subjects: Data processing; Electronic Skin; Embedded Electronic System; Prosthetic Devices; Prosthetics; Robot sensing systems; Sensor arrays; Skin; Substrates
• DOI: 10.1109/PRIME.2016.7519546

Endowing appliances with the capability of sensing and processing touch enables tactile interaction between electronic devices and the environment. E-skin organized as a set of multiple sensing components and integrated with a dedicated embedded electronic system can implement the communication link between e-skin and surroundings. Basing the analysis on a relevant application example (i.e. human prosthetics), the present study describes a system including an electronic skin and a stimulation unit. The overall system was validated and tested in eight healthy subjects, who were asked to recognize the shape, position and direction of a set of dynamic mechanical stimuli presented on the electronic skin. The results demonstrated that tactile information was successfully translated from a mechanical interaction applied on the e-skin into electrotactile patterns, which the subjects could recognize with a good performance. As the obtained results are promising, in this paper the challenging requirements for the integration of e-skin into prosthetic devices were assessed, mainly focusing on computational complexity of the embedded data processing unit.