Robots can now be covered in living skin grown from our cells to make them look more like us. As robots increasingly take on roles that involve close personal contact, it is important to make them look more human so we feel comfortable interacting with them, says Shoji Takeuchi at the University of Tokyo in Japan.
At the moment, robots are sometimes coated in silicone rubber to give them a fleshy appearance, but the rubber lacks the texture of human skin, he says.
To make more realistic-looking skin, Takeuchi and his team put a plastic robot finger in a soup of collagen and human skin cells called fibroblasts for three days. The collagen and fibroblasts stuck to the finger and formed a layer similar to the dermis – the second-from-top layer of human skin.
Next, they gently poured other skin cells called keratinocytes onto the finger to recreate the upper layer, called the epidermis.
The resulting 1.5-millimetre-thick skin was able to stretch and contract as the finger bent back and forwards (pictured). As it did this, it wrinkled like normal skin, says Takeuchi. However, the skin began to dry out since it lacked blood vessels to keep it moist.
In the future, it may be possible to incorporate artificial blood vessels, as well as sweat glands and hair follicles, to make it more realistic, says Takeuchi.
