EU NEUCODES // NEUro-enCODed Electronic Skin, 2023-2026

The main objective of the the EU-funded project “NEUro-enCODed Electronic Skin,” is to develop an electronic skin (e-skin) truly rooted in biological systems. The proposed e-skin will respond to external stimuli (e.g., force) and encode the sensory information in the form of action potentials, just as the biological systems (i.e., sensory neurons) do. This will be achieved by innovative fabrication of neuron circuit arrays over a large area using nanomaterials, and further interfaced with tactile sensors, all on the soft substrate.

• The context

Electronic skin is a fast-emerging soft system to provide tactile sensations like our own skin. However, most of the prototypes today focus on the integration of various sensors on flexible substrates, which can hardly be integrated neurologically onto biological systems nor used over a large area as sensing components for robots. This is mainly because of their mismatch in various aspects including mechanical softness, computing/encoding capability, power consumption.

• Key features

The “bio-like” localised processing, offered by the soft system proposed in NEUCODES, greatly decreases the latency of the sensory data, necessary for the upscaling of the sensing pixels to achieve human-level tactile sensation. Furthermore, this paves the way for the interfacing between soft electronics and biology, triggering transformations in the next generation of neurorobotics, neuroprosthesis and interactive systems.

——————

The project is funded under the Marie Skłodowska-Curie actions (MSCA) Global Fellowship HORIZON-MSCA-2022-PF-01.