Electrical design of structurally tunable skin overlays

Abstract

Current on-skin interfaces focus on enabling electronic circuitry and display-like output on top of the skin, but to the best of our knowledge interfaces for tuning the texture or stiffness of the skin itself are unexplored. We present SkinMorph, a second skin layer that alters its texture and color due to attached electronic control circuitry. Modular electrical design of the system includes a bare-bones processor board with three optional, interchangeable, stackable peripheral modules: a programming and debugging module, a Bluetooth module, and an accelerometer module. The modular circuits in tandem with customizable silicone injection molds allow for adaptation to a variety of applications, resulting in a system which affords some physical protection via tuning the skin overlay characteristics on various areas of the body. Particular attention is paid to on-skin challenges such as electrical and heat safety, miniaturization of circuit components, and skin-safe material choices. The entire system including battery, control board and peripherals, and tunable skin overlay can be mounted on the body without a wired tether impeding the user.