Stretchable and Printable Electronics Will Revolutionize Robotics 2.0

An article in today’s MIT Technology Review indicates that researchers in Tokyo, led by Takao Someya, professor of engineering at the University of Tokyo, have achieved a further step in the development of stretchable electronics, which will eventually enable the wrapping of electronic devices around any 3-dimensional surface or else contorting the devices into any shape without incurring damage.

Significant progress has already been made in the testing and development of flexible electronics involving OLEDs (organic light-emitting diodes) and organic transistors. As reported in a previous article, the same Tokyo research team had achieved success with the development of a “malleable matrix” made of a conductive material connected by organic transistors in a stretchable electronic circuit and held together by carbon nanotubes attached to a stretchy polymer. According to the article, “The new material could be used to make displays, actuators, and simple computers that wrap around furniture.”

The newest development in stretchable electronics was achieved by testing a version of the conductor that can be stretched to more than twice its original size, and which can also be printed. The introduction of printable transistors is the result of efforts in recent years to provide ultracheap alternatives to conventional microchips by replacing conventional photolithography methods with printing techniques.

According to today’s Technology Review, “Bendy, flexible electronics that can be rolled up like paper are already available. But rubber-like stretchable electronics offer the additional advantage that they can cover complex three-dimensional objects. ‘With a sheet of paper, you can wrap a cylinder or a cone, but that’s pretty much it,’ says John Rogers, a professor of materials science and engineering at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. ‘You can’t wrap a body part, a sphere, or an airplane wing.’”

In the latest process, Someya and his group use a printing mask to deposit 100-micrometer-wide lines of the conductor on a piece of rubber, and then the lines are used as a wire grid to connect organic transistors and OLEDs (organic light-emitting diodes) in the form of a display that can stretch by up to 50 percent of its original shape. According to Rogers, “This work is very impressive. The data shows that they can stretch and deform these displays without changing the property of the pixels too much.”

The development of flexible electronics, of course, has particularly staggering implications for the next generation of humanoid robotics. As the preceding article indicates, the researchers could replace the OLEDs with pressure sensors aligned on a printed conductor in order to design sensitive artificial skin for robots or prosthetic limbs. Synthetic e-skin filled with tiny sensors is one of many benefits that flexible electronics will imply for robotics. The ability to produce malleable microelectronic conductors that can be fashioned into very tiny curves and 3 dimensional spaces will lead to new innovations in the development of humanoid robot anatomies and architectures, in ways that are not currently possible with conventional electronics. Furthermore, the ability to employ printable electronics will mean that relatively advanced electronic devices will be accessible to future robotics researchers and developers without the need for utilizing expensive forms of microelectronic lithography and manufacturing.

The age of Robotics 2.0 will mean significant new breakthroughs in the planning, development, and manufacture of components for the next generation of advanced robots. Based on the latest innovations in the field of stretchable electronics, and the possibilities of developing control architectures that more nearly mimic the curvature of the human form, we should expect to see in the next ten to fifteen years a new generation of more streamlined, compact robotic designs that will demonstrate more sophisticated types of movement and expression—making current humanoid models appear clumsy in comparison.

Tags: carbon nanotubes, future of robotics, humanoid robotics, nanoelectronics, organic transistors, stretchable electronics