By Ashley Hall
South Korean and American researchers have developed a new artificial skin for prosthetic limbs that gives wearers back their sense of touch.
Using an array of stretchable sensors, it allows users to engage in activities that many people take for granted, such as hand shaking, holding a ball or knowing if a cup of liquid is hot or cold.
Researchers detailed their work on the “smart skin” in the journal Nature Communications on Tuesday.
The discovery is the marriage of a stretchable skin with sensor arrays designed to stretch along with the movement of that skin and what they detect is then transmitted to the body to stimulate nerves via an ultrathin array of electrodes.
One of Australia’s leading burns surgeons Professor Fiona Wood is hopeful the research might also help in treating people’s damaged skin.
“We want things to look right, to move the best it can, but then to start to feel it, so we’ve got the feeling back so that the movements are more appropriate. It’s a whole new league,” the Royal Perth Hospital burns surgeon said.
“I think the whole concept of having a prostheses that you can feel takes us to a new level.
“Basically what they’ve done is they’re looking at the certain inner tube of a fraction that is very nano level, and they’re understanding the chemistry and the sort of conduction of the electricity in that nano scale., When you get right down that very small level, things kind of change in character.
“But they’re driving this in such a way that they can gain information and then link it into the nervous system.
“And they can gain information by the looks of things with different sensors around pressure, around heat, around stretch. So it’s a whole range of stimuli from the external surface that they’re trying to interface with the rest of the body with this missing link.”
Professor Wood said she was excited by the development.
“I know for example in the area that you’ve been burnt and scared they don’t have the same sensory capacity, your nervous system integrity is damaged,” she said.
“Can we use these surface stretched over a prostheses to make it look like a hand? Can we use that as a cover over our healing burn scar so it can drive a normal cover of that nervous system in the skin, so that we then can regain what we’ve lost with that burn injury? So yes, certainly, clearly I’m very excited about this.”