Optical Soft Skin System for Multimodal Sensing
Overview
Multiple optical emitters and detectors coupled at two ends of the flexible substrate turn light receptor data into strain data in real time
Commercialisation opportunities
Licensing
Problem addressed
The stretchability and flexibility of e-skin on soft robots are limited by the integration of rigid sensors and sensing components. The invention solves this problem and bring about an artificial flexible soft skin system with multimodal sensing capability.
Innovation
- It includes a flexible substrate/waveguide medium that is optically transmissive and changes its light permeability upon encountering different sensing patterns.
- It consists of multiple optical emitters and detectors coupled at two ends of the flexible substrate.
Key impact
- A processor for decoding the light receptor data into strain/displacements in real time through computational/algorithmic approaches to distinguish different sensing modalities placed onto the substrate including stretching, bending, pressing, and overall 3D surface morphology.
- An FE interpolation method is able to enlarge the dataset for model training and a machine learning based model is able to distinguish different sensing modalities.
Application
- Biometric prosthetics
- Intelligent robots
- Shape sensors
Patent
- PCT Application No. PCT/CN2021/128342
The University of Hong Kong (HKU)
Founded in 1911, The University of Hong Kong (HKU) is the first and oldest institution of higher education in Hong Kong. For over a century, the University has dedicated itself to creating knowledge, providing education, and serving society. Today, HKU has an established worldwide reputation for being a research-led comprehensive University with ten Faculties and a strong commitment to intellectual freedom, liberty and diversity. HKU has a proud record of academic recognition in researches through honours and awards received from both local and international bodies.
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