THE skin of a robot has to fulfil two apparently opposing needs: it must be elastic enough to lend the robot human-like dexterity, and yet carry enough wiring to allow it to sense its environment.
If engineers connect the robot’s sensors to metal wires these will break when the skin stretches. An emerging answer might be to embed a broad corrugated metal film in an elastic covering instead.
Electrical engineers Sigurd Wagner and Stephanie Lacour at Princeton University have developed a kind of connector incorporating broad metal strips that, unlike wires, can stretch up to twice their length and still…
