Self-powered active sensing skin enabled by triboelectric effect
Ying-Chih Lai1,2,3*, Hsing-Mei Wu1
1材料系, 中興大學, 台中, Taiwan
2永續能源與奈米科技研究中心, 中興大學, 台中, Taiwan
3永續農業創新發展研究中心, 中興大學, 台中, Taiwan
* Presenter:Ying-Chih Lai, email:lai423@gmail.com
Robots that can move, feel, and respond like organisms will bring revolutionary impact to today’s technologies. Developing skin-like sensory devices allows them to naturally sense and interact with environment. It would be better if the capabilities to sense can be active like real skin. However, challenges in complicated structures, incompatible moduli, poor stretchability and sensitivity, large driving-voltage, and power dissipation hinder applicability of conventional technologies.
In this present, we will demonstrate the first use of triboelectric effect to realize the robotic sensing skin. The robots’ skins can actively sense proximity, contact, and pressure to external stimuli via generating electricity from themselves. The driving-energy is from the natural triboelectrification effect. The perfect integration of the triboelectric robotic skins on robots enables them to perform different actively sensing and responding tasks. For a conscious gripper, it can actively be aware of different actions in moving an object including approaching, grabbing, lifting, lowering, and even the accident of dropping off the objects. A perceivable robotic finger can check a baby’s diaper condition. A conscious robotic crawler can perceive its muscle motions during undulating gaits and detect very subtle human physiological signals. The presented triboelectric robotic skins that are self-powered, highly-sensitive, highly-stretchable can meet a wide range of applications where smart interfaces are needed. And, the first achievements in the actively perceiving and responsive robots can push the boundaries of artificial intelligences, robotics, as well as their vast related applications.
Keywords: electronic skins, triboelectric effect