Touchlab

Electronic skin that gives robots the power of human touch. Touchlab's e-skin is robust and thinner than human skin, and it can be wrapped around any surface. It uses quantum tunnelling which makes it biomimetic - sensing pressure and location, enabling robots to roll pens, feel texture, and sense pain like a human would. Touchlab software allows robots to recognise objects through touch alone.

Summary

University:

Edinburgh

Stage:

Seed

Sector:

Robotics

Investment year:

2020

Website

Skin is the biggest organ in the human body. It is how we feel temperature, pressure, and make sense of much of the world around us. Robots lack the power of touch, which stops them from performing a large number of human activities. Touchlab’s e-skin changes this.

Touchlab’s electronic skin allows machines to feel like humans. Robots in warehouses can use e-skin to recognise and sort objects automatically, robotic doctors can take a patient’s pulse, and Touchlab allows gamers to feel the worlds they are immersed in. Robots with e-skin can also be used for nuclear decontamination to avoid human exposure, and even sense atmospheric conditions in space.

Touchlab is led by Zaki Hussein, a PhD in intelligent sensing and measurement at Edinburgh University. Before Creator Fund’s investment, Zaki had bootstrapped the company and developed his electronic skin without external investment.

“If we create avatars of ourselves that have the power to touch, man can fuse with machine, and not only control it, but enhance ourselves beyond what is naturally possible.”

Zaki Hussein