Achievements and Open Issues Toward Embedding Tactile Sensing and Interpretation into Electronic Skin Systems

Materials integrated tactile sensing systems are still far from relying on well assessed and mature technological approaches even if research efforts date back to the late 80’s. This is mainly due to the fact that a killing application has not yet been identified even if in the last years promising applications have come to the stage, e.g. humanoid robotics and prosthetics to cite the most relevant ones. In this framework of new application scenarios and research activity, we present our vision of the physical, structural and functional properties of the electronic skin system on the basis of the current state of the art, towards solving open questions and filling the gap between research on tactile sensing systems and industrial applications.