Electronic skin as wireless human-machine interfaces for robotic VR

The coronavirus pandemic has highlighted the importance of developing intelligent robotics to prevent infectious disease spread. Human-machine interfaces (HMIs) give a chance of interactions between users and robotics, which play a significant role in teleoperating robotics. Conventional HMIs are based on bulky, rigid, and expensive machines, which mainly focus on robots/machines control, but lack of adequate feedbacks to users, which limit their applications in conducting complicated tasks. Therefore, developing closed-loop HMIs with both accurate sensing and feedback functions is extremely important. Here, we present a closed-loop HMI system based on skin-integrated electronics, whose electronics compliantly interface with the whole body for wireless motion capturing and haptic feedback via Bluetooth, Wireless Fidelity (Wi-Fi), and Internet. The integration of visual and haptic VR via skin-integrated electronics together into a closed-loop HMI for robotic VR demonstrates great potentials in noncontact collection of bio samples, nursing infectious disease patients and many others.