The future of prosthetics may include artificial limbs with a sense of touch if a Stanford researcher's time in the lab pays off. Zhenan Bao, a chemical engineer at Stanford, is working to develop artificial skin that can do just about everything real skin can, according to an article from NPR, including heal itself.
Bao’s specially designed plastic skin reportedly contains a nano-scale pressure sensor and electrodes that turn touch signals into electric pulses. These signals are ideally transmitted to the brain, according to the article. To mimic skin’s self-healing properties, Bao's plastic skin can repair itself when torn. She and her colleagues have also developed a flexible plastic that stretches to eight times its original length and are working now on how to power their artificial skin, according to the article. Testing on patients is still some way off.
Read the entire article here.