Robotic skin developed that can detect pressure, temperature and pain

▲ The skin is made from a flexible, inexpensive gel material and transforms the entire surface of a robotic hand into a smart sensor. Photo courtesy of the University of Cambridge

Europa Press

La Jornada Newspaper, Wednesday, June 18, 2025, p. 6

Madrid. A revolutionary robotic skin brings machines closer to a human-like touch, as it can detect pressure, temperature, pain, and even distinguish multiple points of contact at once.

Made from a flexible, cost-effective gel material, this skin transforms the entire surface of a robotic hand into a responsive, intelligent device, unlike traditional robotic skins, which rely on a combination of different sensors.

Additionally, it can be added to robotic hands like a glove, allowing robots to detect information about their environment in a similar way to humans, Cambridge reports.

Researchers at the University of Cambridge and University College London (UCL) developed this flexible, conductive skin that is easy to manufacture and can be cast and molded into a wide range of complex shapes. This technology detects and processes various physical signals, allowing robots to interact with the physical world in more meaningful ways.

Unlike other robotic touch solutions, which typically operate using sensors embedded in small areas, the electronic skin developed by researchers at Cambridge and UCL is entirely a sensor, bringing it closer to our own sensory system: our skin.

Although the robotic skin isn't as sensitive as human skin, it can detect signals from more than 860,000 tiny pathways in the material, allowing it to recognize different types of touch and pressure—such as the touch of a finger, a hot or cold surface, damage caused by cuts or punctures, or simultaneous contact of multiple points—on the same material.

Researchers combined physical tests and machine learning techniques to help the robotic skin learn which pathways are most important, so it can detect different types of contact more efficiently.

In addition to potential future applications for humanoid robots or human prosthetics where the sense of touch is vital, the researchers say robotic skin could be useful in industries as diverse as automotive and disaster relief. The results were published in the journal Science Robotics .

How it works

Electronic skins work by converting physical information, such as pressure or temperature, into electronic signals. In most cases, different types of sensors are needed for different types of touch: one to detect pressure, another for temperature, etc., which are then integrated into soft, flexible materials. However, the signals from these sensors can interfere with each other, and the materials are easily damaged.

Having different sensors for different types of touch results in complex materials to manufacture , said lead author David Hardman of Cambridge's Department of Engineering. We wanted to develop a solution that could detect multiple types of touch at once, but with a single material .

At the same time, we need something cheap and durable, suitable for widespread use , explained co-author Thomas George Thuruthel of UCL.

Their solution uses a type of sensor that reacts differently to different types of touch, known as multimodal sensing. While it's difficult to identify the cause of each signal, sensing materials are easier to manufacture and more robust.

The researchers cast a soft, stretchy, and electrically conductive gelatinous hydrogel and molded it into the shape of a human hand. They tested various electrode configurations to determine which provided the most useful information about different types of touch. With just 32 electrodes placed on the wrist, they were able to collect more than 1.7 million data points from the entire hand, thanks to the tiny pathways in the conductive material.

The skin was then tested using different types of touch: the researchers subjected it to a heat gun, pressed it with their fingers and a robotic arm, gently touched it with their fingers, and even opened it with a scalpel. The team used the data collected during these tests to train a machine learning model that would allow the hand to recognize the meaning of different types of touch.

We can extract a huge amount of information from these materials; they can take thousands of measurements very quickly , said Hardman, a postdoctoral researcher in the lab of Professor Fumiya Iida and co-author of the study. They measure many different elements at once, over a large area .

We're not yet at the level where robotic skin is as good as human skin, but we believe it's better than anything currently available , Thuruthel said. Our method is flexible and easier to build than traditional sensors, and we can calibrate it using human touch for a variety of tasks .

In the future, researchers hope to improve the durability of the electronic skin and conduct further tests on real-world robotic tasks.

Latin Press

La Jornada Newspaper, Wednesday, June 18, 2025, p. 6

Washington. In a study spanning the entire oceans, researchers from the University of Miami discovered hundreds of giant viruses previously unknown to science.

The research used custom-made software to identify the genomes of microbes in seawater samples, including 230 unexplored giant viruses, Nature npj Viruses reported.

For experts, identifying these viruses is crucial to understanding life in the ocean, and in particular the survival of marine organisms known as protists, such as algae, amoebas, and flagellates.

By better understanding the diversity and role of giant viruses in the ocean and how they interact with algae and other ocean microbes, we can predict and possibly control harmful algal blooms, which pose a risk to human health , according to virologist Mohammad Moniruzzaman.

With rapid advances in genomic databases, analytical tools, and software programs like those used in this research, the process of discovering giant viruses is now much simpler than before, giving scientists new insights into how they behave and spread.

Giant viruses, for example, often cause the death of phytoplankton, the tiny photosynthetic organisms commonly found in oceans, lakes, and rivers.

These organisms are crucial to marine life and food chains, and produce huge amounts of terrestrial oxygen, so better understanding the viruses that attack them could contribute to protection efforts.

In addition to the 230 newly detected giant viruses, the study also identified 569 new functional proteins, including nine involved in photosynthesis.

Everything indicates that, in some cases, viruses are capable of hijacking the photosynthetic functions of their hosts to obtain the energy needed to survive.

The researchers managed to classify the giant viruses they discovered into two existing viral orders: Imitervirales and Algavirales .

These groups use different infection strategies, with the Imitervirales being the most genetically complex, indicating a more flexible life strategy that potentially allows the virus to survive in a wider variety of hosts.