Anna Maria Coclita

And then what you see is just really the tattoo paper.

So it's so tiny that you don't see it and you don't feel it, but it takes the shape of the support material.

This is the architecture of the artificial skin.

So we are really able to control the sickness and the chemical composition of a material at the atomic level.

like touch, temperature, and humidity.

Piezoelectric material is a material that, when it is compressed, produces electricity.

This produces an electric current.

From there... Each of these cylinders could be connected to a series of electrodes, and then we measure the electricity at each of these locations.

And similar to how our own skin sends information about what it's feeling to our brains... The artificial skin sends information to a computer, and that's where we read this electric signal.

But then, you know, this signal can also be transmitted wirelessly to, for example, a neuroprosthetic.

And this is how we actually intend to transmit it to the brain.

But that will be a future development.

Yeah, so with this type of artificial skin, when this would be added to a prosthesis, then we could produce electrical signals that could send directly the information, could either stimulate the rest of the arm or of the leg, or they could transmit the information to a neuroprosthesis in the brain and

then help the patient recognize also the characteristics of the objects that they are touching.

So a prosthetic hand, for example, would feel a hot cup or a cold bottle of beer and would feel the difference.

Another interesting field of application would be robotics.

Nowadays, humanoid robots are used in many fields, for example in medicine, but also in household.

And these robots are exposed to several stimuli, several interactions with the environment and with the humans, and sometimes they have too many inputs at the same time.

And this is the reason number one for robot failure.

So imagine a future where actually a robot could be a bit more sensitive, a bit smarter.