Perception-to-Cognition Tactile Sensing Based on Artificial-Intelligence-Motivated Human Full-Skin Bionic Electronic Skin

Traditional electronic skin (e-skin), due to the lack of human-brain-like thinking and judging capability, is powerless to accelerate the pace to the intelligent era. Herein, artificial intelligence (AI)-motivated full-skin bionic (FSB) e-skin consisting of the structures of human vellus hair, epidermis-dermis-hypodermis, is proposed. Benefiting from the double interlocked layered microcone structure and supercapacitive iontronic effect, the FSB e-skin exhibits ultrahigh sensitivity of 8053.1 kPa(-1) (<1 kPa), linear sensitivity of 3103.5 kPa(-1) (1-34 kPa), and fast response/recovery time of <5.6 ms. In addition, it can realize the evolution from tactile perception to advanced intelligent tactile cognition after being equipped with a brain. First, static/dynamic contactless tactile perception is achieved based on the triboelectric effect of the vellus hair bionics. Second, the supercapacitive iontronic effect based structural bionics of the epidermis-dermis-hypodermis and a five-layer multilayer perception (MLP) enable the general intelligent tactile cognition of gesture cognition and robot interaction. Most importantly, by making full use of the FSB e-skin with a six-layer MLP neural network, an advanced intelligent material cognition system is developed for real-time cognition of the object material species and locations via one contact, which surpasses the capability of humans.

Automated summary

A full-skin bionic electronic skin driven by artificial intelligence (AI) is proposed, which exhibits high sensitivity and fast response/recovery time. It can evolve from tactile perception to intelligent tactile cognition, and can achieve real-time cognition of object material species and locations via one contact. It has broad application prospects.