System-Level Integration and Multimodal Signal Acquisition in Electronic Skin: A Review and Demonstration

Summary

This review highlights recent advances in electronic skin technologies, emphasizing multimodal tactile sensing, flexible architectures, and low-power data acquisition. A 36-channel hybrid-frequency platform demonstrates real-time tactile recognition and robotic interaction. Future directions focus on improving large-area uniformity, intelligent calibration, and adaptive perception for practical robotic skin applications.

Abstract

Electronic skin (E-skin) technologies emulate the tactile and sensory capabilities of human skin, enabling perception of pressure, strain, temperature, and other external stimuli for intelligent robots and wearable systems. This review summarizes recent progress in materials, structural designs, sensing mechanisms, and system-level integration that have advanced the performance and functionality of E-skin platforms. Particular attention is given to multimodal tactile sensing and embedded signal acquisition strategies that enable real-time recognition of tactile patterns and gestures. Advances in flexible architectures, hybrid-frequency sampling, and low-power data acquisition circuits have enhanced the reliability, scalability, and temporal resolution of modern E-skin systems. As a demonstration, a 36-channel hybrid-frequency tactile sensing platform was developed by the authors to illustrate the practical implementation of multimodal signal fusion and robotic interaction. Finally, current challenges and future directions-including large-area uniformity, intelligent calibration, and adaptive perception-are discussed to guide the transition from laboratory prototypes to deployable robotic skin applications.

Introduction

E-skin represents a new generation of soft electronic systems capable of mimicking the sensory and functional properties of human skin. By detecting mechanical and thermal stimuli such as pressure, strain, temperature, and slip, E-skin enables machines to perceive their surroundings in a human-like manner. Since the early work by Someya and colleagues that introduced flexible skin-inspired electronics, research in this field has advanced rapidly across materials science, device engineering, and system integration^1,2.

Early developments in E-skin primarily focused on creating stretch....