Tactile sensing technology in bionic skin: A review

Bionic skin has shown great potential in the fields of multifunctional robots and medical care. The tactile sensor, an important part of bionic skin, is used to measure the temperature, humidity, pressure, vibration, and other physical quantities including the external environment, object shape, and structure size. As a result, tactile sensors can be applied as epidermal sensors amounted on human skin to monitor the health and motion of users, and applied on soft robotics to help robots sense the environment information around. This paper analyzes and discusses the research progress of tactile sensing technology applied in bionic skin in recent years, including capacitive tactile sensors, piezoresistive tactile sensors, piezoelectric tactile sensors, photoelectric tactile sensors, magnetic tactile sensors, electrochemical sensors, and multi-component tactile sensors. In addition, the principle of each tactile sensor, advantages and disadvantages of various tactile sensors, and their practical applications in various fields are summarized. Finally, the future research direction of bionic skin sensing technology is outlooked.