‘Groundbreaking technology often enters the market at a premium before scaling’: Touch-sensitive e-skin could soon be commonplace in robotics

Robots continue to advance, yet they still struggle with tactile sensation. Touchlab is working on developing e-skin technology to give robots this ability. Unlike human skin, Touchlab's e-skin is thinner than human skin and responds in less than a millisecond. This technology measures pressure, force, and direction using quantum tunnelling.

However, taking e-skin from pilot to production involves overcoming various challenges. These include durability, reliability, affordability, and adaptability. Touchlab is addressing these concerns by using existing off-the-shelf components and custom engineering where necessary.

Tactility is crucial for robots to perform tasks like picking up objects of varying sizes and weights. Current computer vision alone isn't enough to prevent a robot from dropping or crushing an object. Touchlab's e-skin enables robots to sense when an object is about to slip, allowing for immediate adjustments to maintain a secure grip.

The technology is thinner than human skin and detects 3D forces, direction, and pressure in real-time. It even detects incipient slip, enabling robots to adjust their grip instantly, just like the human nervous system. At Future Lab, Touchlab demonstrated its technology in a robotic arm controlled through haptic feedback. While initially clunky due to cables and constraints, the goal is to achieve smoother teleoperation by integrating e-skin directly onto the robot and pairing it with onboard AI for autonomous slip detection and dexterity.

Touchlab offers both custom-made tactile devices tailored to specific robotic architectures and scalable, off-the-shelf components that can be integrated into various robot end-effectors. Their vision is to make tactile technology as ubiquitous as MEMS sensors, integrating it into every commercial robot that interacts with objects and humans.