Physiological constraints could be observed with sensor embedded human sweat-powered e-skin

Caltech’s Wei Gao, assistant professor in the Andrew and Peggy Cherng department of Medical Engineering, has developed a soft, flexible rubber electronic ‘e-skin’ that he hopes could one day help with the development of next gen medical devices. He says the e-skin can monitor nerve signals that control muscles by running on biofuel cells powered by human sweat, and that it can be embedded with sensors to monitor blood sugar levels, heart rate and body temperature.

In a statement Wei Gao said: “One of the major challenges with these kinds of wearable devices is on the power side. Many people are using batteries, but that’s not very sustainable. Some people have tried using solar cells or harvesting the power of human motion, but we wanted to know, ‘Can we get sufficient energy from sweat to power the wearables?’ and the answer is yes.

While near-field communication is a common approach for many battery-free e-skin systems, it could be only used for power transfer and data readout over a very short distance. Bluetooth communication consumes higher power but is a more attractive approach with extended connectivity for practical medical and robotic applications. We want this system to be a platform. In addition to being a wearable biosensor, this can be a human-machine interface. The vital signs and molecular information collected using this platform could be used to design and optimise next-generation prosthetics.”