Advancing flexible tactile sensors for interfacing human and machine

Professor Jongbaeg Kim and his research team at Yonsei have developed high-performance flexible tactile sensors for advanced wearable applications. The researchers utilized nanomaterial-coated fabrics as sensing materials and stacked them into multilayers to maximize their structural benefits, which dramatically enhanced sensing performances. The team also demonstrated all-textile flexible keyboards and wearable tactile interfaces that wirelessly deliver tactile information between the users, proving the potential of their work. These results were published as the cover article of Advanced Functional Materials in August 2019, with the title “Multi-Layered, Hierarchical Fabric-Based Tactile Sensors with High Sensitivity and Linearity in Ultrawide Pressure Range.”

Professor Kim and his team have been working on flexible electronic devices through advanced materials and designs. They have been developing 1) functional devices such as multidirectional force sensors and crosstalk-free sensor matrices, and 2) fabrication technologies for integrating high-performance sensors into flexible platforms. With these technologies, the team aims to realize multimodal interfaces that can bridge the gap between human and machine. According to Professor Kim, their research “may be applied to augmented/virtual realities and wearable robots by providing enhanced haptic interaction and delicate control.”