A team of engineers at Stanford University created synthetic skin that senses touch and generates a response to increases in pressure.
Published in the journal Science, the new study details what the researchers call the most realistic recreation of human skin to date.
"Previously, with plastic material, we and others in the field have been able to make sensitive touch sensors - but the electrical signal that comes out from the sensor is not the right format for the brain to be able to interpret it," study senior author Zhenan Bao, a chemical engineer at Stanford, told BBC News. "Our sensor is now coupled with a printed, simple electronic circuit. That circuit allows our sensor to generate electrical pulses that can communicate with the brain.
"We see this as the first step towards using plastic materials for artificial skin on prosthetic limbs."
The researchers' synthetic skin works by cutting out a so-called "translation" the nervous system needs to make to interpret sensory pulses.
"This is the first time a flexible, skin-like material has been able to detect pressure and also transmit a signal to a component of the nervous system," Bao said in a news release. "We have a lot of work to take this from experimental to practical applications.
"But after spending many years in this work, I now see a clear path where we can take our artificial skin."
The researchers envision their research advancing wearable technology, at least in the somewhat near future.
"A number of companies and clinical trials are already exploring optogenetics as an alternative to electrical stimulation," Polina Anikeeva, a materials scientist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology who was not involved in the study, told BBC News. "As the efficacy and safety of the method becomes better understood, it is not unrealistic to envision more applications of optogenetic neural stimulation in prosthetic interfaces - but it is going to take time and effort."
