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What are you working on at the moment?

I鈥檓 developing an artificial skin that can mimic human skin. My material is sensitive enough to detect touches as light as a butterfly landing or a breeze blowing across it, but also robust enough to deal with the much greater forces that skin is subjected to every day.

What鈥檚 lacking in current artificial skins?

Most of the artificial skins available are pressure-based, so can only detect compression forces 鈥� just one aspect of human skin. If a fly lands on your nose, I don鈥檛 know of any existing artificial skin that would detect that.

How did you make yours more sensitive?

My design was inspired by nature. Creatures like spiders have tiny, hair-like structures on their legs, mainly used for touch and vibration-detection. These are connected to neurons. When the 鈥渉air鈥� bends, the neuron is stimulated. I made artificial versions by embedding magnetic nanowires in a super-elastic polymer. This very soft material can bend easily with any kind of force from any direction. And when it bends, the change is detected using an integrated magnetic-sensing element that acts as the artificial neuron.

What鈥檚 the next step?

Our prototypes , so for the next step we want to connect it with humans. Late last year, researchers and neurosurgeons from the US Department of Defense and Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland, connected a basic sensor , enabling a man to feel when pressure was applied to the fingers of a prosthetic hand. It was a proof of principle using a very simple pressure sensor. Our goal is to do something similar but with our high-performance skin providing a rich stream of sense data directly to the brain.

Who could use this artificial skin?

Many people who have lost their sense of touch as a result of a disease like neuropathy or a spinal cord injury. Our skin could be used in gloves, for example, or to coat prosthetic limbs, bringing touch back even when a limb is lost.

For those without impairment, could it be used to provide a souped-up sense of touch?

We could design it to be as sensitive as a spider, but it鈥檚 not our goal to deliver a new generation of spidermen. We want a kid with impaired touch to be able to feel every aspect of stroking his dog. If he touches a wooden surface, we want him to know it鈥檚 wood by touch alone.

What other applications can you foresee?

We are working on smart surgical tools. When a catheter is inserted into the body, for instance, everything depends on the force the doctor applies: too much can damage internal tissues. Several surgeons in Saudi Arabia are interested in equipping their catheters with our material to provide super-sensitive feedback and reduce internal damage. Electronic skins also have great potential to introduce sense of touch to robots.

This article appeared in print under the headline 鈥淚nspired by spidey sense鈥�