Electronic skin helps people with limbs feel pain and objects

If researched and developed successfully, electronic skin will become a new hope for people with disabilities who can experience the pain and feel of everything around them like normal people.

For decades, the health sector has attempted to create the most realistic and high-quality prosthetics so that people with disabilities or unfortunate amputees can feel things around like normal people. . But one of the most common problems for people with disabilities, is the "hallucination" syndrome or the feeling of a useless part of the body, unable to feel everything.

The fake, integrated electronic skin layer is capable of transmitting the perception of everything around it like the real thing.

However, engineers from Johns Hopkins University are working hard to solve this problem by creating prosthetic limbs, integrating electronic skin that is capable of transmitting things around like real limbs.

According to Interesting Engineering, the new surface skin on a prosthetic hand helps create a touch like a normal finger. Initial testing with patients showed very positive reactions.

One patient shared: "Many years and now I can feel my hand. My life is like a resurgence."

Engineers have created new electronic skin by combining fabric and rubber, and integrating sensors into the material layer. These sensors act like nerve endings, helping the dermis to reproduce the sensation of touch, even feeling pain before stimuli. External stimulation signals will be transferred to the wearer's peripheral nerves and create the most realistic feeling.

Luke Osborn, a graduate student in biomedical engineering at Johns Hopkins, said the sensor works like a secondary layer of skin and will bring a sense of something round or sharp.

External stimulation signals will be transferred to the wearer's peripheral nerves and create the most realistic feeling.

Pain awareness is the main goal in research. Most people don't like the pain, but in fact, this feeling is extremely important because it helps warn people from dangerous situations. Osborn insists that pain is one of the best protection mechanisms of the human body.

Osborn said: "The pain is of course really uncomfortable but it is also a necessary feeling to protect the body. But for the disabled, they cannot feel them through fake limbs."

Exotic skin provides an opportunity to experience a more complete life for the disabled

Electronic skin (E-dermis) stimulates nerves on the limb without having to invade the skin. Besides, electronic skin also allows disabled people to feel continuous touch lines. In other words, they can feel the pain from mild to throbbing.

Electronic skin also allows disabled people to feel continuous touch lines.

The team developed a "neurological model" similar to pain sensory receptors in the human nervous system. Thus, electronic skin can reproduce the feeling of pain the way neurons on the skin sense.

In testing with volunteers and using EEG technology to monitor brain activity, the team found that the participants in the experiment actually experienced pain similar to the natural response of body.

Research author and biomedical engineering professor at Johns Hopkins, Nitish Thakor said: "For the first time, a prosthetic device can give the feeling of a amputee like a real hand."

Even so, the skin of the skin still has certain limitations. It can't feel the temperature yet. The research team has only focused on the ability to detect curvature and sharpness.

The study was published in the recent Science Robotics magazine. Hopefully in the near future, scientists can create fake limbs possessing the ability to feel things, providing opportunities to experience more positive life for the disabled.