Maurizio Valle – författare

Considerable amount of effort has been devoted, over the recent years, towards the development of electronic skin (e-skin) for many application domains such as prosthetics, robotics, and industrial automation.

Electronic Skin: Sensors and Systems focuses on the main components constituting the e-skin system. The e-skin system is based on: i) sensing materials composing the tactile sensor array, ii) the front end electronics for data acquisition and signal conditioning, iii) the embedded processing unit performing tactile data decoding, and iv) the communication interface in charge of transmitting the sensors data for further computing.

Technical topics discussed in the book include: • Tactile sensing material; • Electronic Skin systems;• Embedded computing and tactile data decoding; • Communication systems for tactile data transmission; • Relevant applications of e-skin system;

The book takes into account not only sensing materials but it also provides a thorough assessment of the current state of the art at system level. The book addresses embedded electronics and tactile data processing and decoding, techniques for low power embedded computing, and the communication interface.

Electronic Skin: Sensors and Systems is ideal for researchers, Ph.D. students, academic staff and Masters/research students in sensors/sensing systems, embedded systems, data processing and decoding, and communication systems.

Considerable amount of effort has been devoted, over the recent years, towards the development of electronic skin (e-skin) for many application domains such as prosthetics, robotics, and industrial automation.

Electronic Skin: Sensors and Systems focuses on the main components constituting the e-skin system. The e-skin system is based on: i) sensing materials composing the tactile sensor array, ii) the front end electronics for data acquisition and signal conditioning, iii) the embedded processing unit performing tactile data decoding, and iv) the communication interface in charge of transmitting the sensors data for further computing.

Technical topics discussed in the book include: • Tactile sensing material; • Electronic Skin systems;• Embedded computing and tactile data decoding; • Communication systems for tactile data transmission; • Relevant applications of e-skin system;

The book takes into account not only sensing materials but it also provides a thorough assessment of the current state of the art at system level. The book addresses embedded electronics and tactile data processing and decoding, techniques for low power embedded computing, and the communication interface.

Electronic Skin: Sensors and Systems is ideal for researchers, Ph.D. students, academic staff and Masters/research students in sensors/sensing systems, embedded systems, data processing and decoding, and communication systems.

Intelligent/smart systems have become common practice in many engineering applications. On the other hand, current low cost standard CMOS technology (and future foreseeable developments) makes available enormous potentialities. The next breakthrough will be the design and development of "smart adaptive systems on silicon" i.e. very power and highly size efficient complete systems (i.e. sensing, computing and "actuating" actions) with intelligence on board on a single silicon die. Smart adaptive systems on silicon will be able to "adapt" autonomously to the changing environment and will be able to implement "intelligent" behaviour and both perceptual and cognitive tasks. At last, they will communicate through wireless channels, they will be battery supplied or remote powered (via inductive coupling) and they will be ubiquitous in our every day life.

Although many books deal with research and engineering topics (i.e. algorithms, technology, implementations, etc.) few of them try to bridge the gap between them and to address the issues related to feasibility, reliability and applications. Smart Adaptive Systems on Silicon, though not exhaustive, tries to fill this gap and to give answers mainly to the feasibility and reliability issues.

Smart Adaptive Systems on Silicon mainly focuses on the analog and mixed mode implementation on silicon because this approach is amenable of achieving impressive energy and size efficiency. Moreover, analog systems can be more easily interfaced with sensing and actuating devices.

This book showcases the state of the art in the field of electronics, as presented by researchers and engineers at the 55th Annual Meeting of the Italian Electronics Society (SIE), held in Genoa, Italy, on June 26–28, 2024. It covers a broad range of aspects, including: integrated circuits and systems, micro- and nano-electronic devices, microwave electronics, sensors and microsystems, optoelectronics and photonics, power electronics, electronic systems and applications.

Future robots are expected to work closely and interact safely with real-world objects and humans alike. Sense of touch is important in this context, as it helps estimate properties such as shape, texture, hardness, material type and many more; provides action related information, such as slip detection; and helps carrying out actions such as rolling an object between fingers without dropping it. This book presents an in-depth description of the solutions available for gathering tactile data, obtaining aforementioned tactile information from the data and effectively using the same in various robotic tasks.

The efforts during last four decades or so have yielded a wide spectrum of tactile sensing technologies and engineered solutions for both intrinsic and extrinsic touch sensors. Nowadays, new materials and structures are being explored for obtaining robotic skin with physical features like bendable, conformable, and stretchable.  Such features are important for covering various body parts of robots or 3D surfaces. Nonetheless, there exist many more hardware, software and application related issues that must be considered to make tactile sensing an effective component of future robotic platforms. This book presents an in-depth analysis of various system related issues and presents the trade-offs one may face while developing an effective tactile sensing system. For this purpose, human touch sensing has also been explored. The design hints coming out of the investigations into human sense of touch can be useful in improving the effectiveness of tactile sensory modality in robotics and other machines. Better integration of tactile sensors on a robot’s body is prerequisite for the effective utilization of tactile data.

The concept of semiconductor devices based sensors is an interesting one, as it allows compact and fast tactile sensing systems with capabilities such as human-like spatio-temporal resolution. This book presents acomprehensive description of semiconductor devices based tactile sensing. In particular, novel Piezo Oxide Semiconductor Field Effect Transistor (POSFET) based approach for high resolution tactile sensing has been discussed in detail. Finally, the extension of semiconductors devices based sensors concept to large and flexile areas has been discussed for obtaining robotic or electronic skin.

With its multidisciplinary scope, this book is suitable for graduate students and researchers coming from diverse areas such robotics (bio-robots, humanoids, rehabilitation etc.), applied materials, humans touch sensing, electronics, microsystems, and instrumentation. To better explain the concepts the text is supported by large number of figures.