Artificial intelligence-powered electronic skin

Skin-interfaced electronics is gradually changing medical practices by enabling continuous and non-invasive tracking of physiological and biochemical information. With the rise of big data and digital medicine, next-generation electronic skin (e-skin) will be able to use artificial intelligence (AI) to optimize its design as well as uncover user-personalized health profiles. Recent multimodal e-skin platforms have already used machine learning algorithms for autonomous data analytics. Unfortunately, there is a lack of appropriate AI protocols and guidelines for e-skin devices, resulting in overly complex models and non-reproducible conclusions for simple applications. This Review aims to present AI technologies in e-skin hardware and assess their potential for new inspired integrated platform solutions. We outline recent breakthroughs in AI strategies and their applications in engineering e-skins as well as understanding health information collected by e-skins, highlighting the transformative deployment of AI in robotics, prosthetics, virtual reality and personalized healthcare. We also discuss the challenges and prospects of AI-powered e-skins as well as predictions for the future trajectory of smart e-skins. Skin-like flexible electronics (electronic skin) has great potential in medical practices to enable continuous tracking of physical and biochemical information. Xu et al. review the integration of AI methods and electronic skins, especially how data collected from sensors are processed by AI to extract features for human–machine interactions and health monitoring purposes.