A flexible tactile sensor with decoupled multimodal sensing capacity based on melamine sponge-MXene@CsPbBr₃ aerogel

Humanoid robots, as well as the requirement for sensing force and temperature, are at high risk of prolonged exposure to complex light conditions, especially UV radiation in automotive baking workshops, outer space, etc., which will make the circuits and electronic components extremely prone to aging, necessitating timely assessment. Here, a multimodal flexible tactile sensor is assembled by utilizing a novel melamine sponge-MXene@CsPbBr₃ hybrid aerogel as the sensing unit, whereby the melamine sponge provides the deformable support skeleton, the MXene realizes the functions of piezoresistive pressure sensing and thermoelectric temperature detecting, and the CsPbBr₃ realizes not only the light-sensing behavior, especially the visual capacity of ultraviolet excited photoluminescence, but also the synergetic enhancement of thermoelectric ability. Via these different kinds of sensing mechanisms, the derived flexible tactile sensor realizes multimodal response to pressure, temperature and ultraviolet without cross-coupling. Furthermore, by using a machine learning algorithm, it can distinguish the hardness and material of six automotive parts with high recognition accuracy of 98.2% and 98.6%, respectively. Moreover, based on the visual photoluminescence capability, a sensory array is assembled to successfully recognize different shapes. This work provides a feasible way to protect robots when used in complex operating environments.