NUS Singapore team develops liquid-based wearable sensors

 

A team from NUS Singapore led by Professor Lim Chwee Teck, department of biomedical engineering, has developed a wearable liquid-based microfluidic tactile sensor. A world’s first, it is extremely suitable for helping robots feel – for example by adding touch to robotic fingers.

The novel device can also be used in wearable consumer electronics, smart medical prosthetic devices, and real-time healthcare monitoring. They also have the added advantage of being simple to produce and cost-effective.

Conventional tactile sensors available today are rigid and in solid-state form. Hence, they are restrictive and bulky. The NUS team’s liquid-based micro-fluidic tactile sensors address an existing gap in the market. “Being thin and flexible, the sensor gives a better fit when monitoring body movements. It is also small and durable,” said the professor.

In the area of real-time healthcare monitoring, their micro-fluidic sensor may be incorporated into a skin patch that could both sense and inject drugs at the same time.