Biomimetic Metamaterial-based Interface for Decoding Heterogeneous Mechanodermal Activity

TL;DR

This paper introduces a biomimetic metamaterial interface inspired by human skin that captures and decodes complex mechanical signals for improved healthcare and human-machine interaction.

Contribution

It presents a novel biomimetic metamaterial interface that mimics skin's mechanoreceptors to accurately decode heterogeneous mechanodermal activity signals.

Findings

Successfully captures diverse mechanical signals from skin analogs

Achieves accurate decoding of complex mechanodermal activity

Enhances signal amplification and noise suppression

Abstract

Human skin acts as a dynamic biomechanical interface that conveys critical physiological and behavioural information through spatiotemporally distributed deformations. Due to the limited capabilities of current sensing technologies, the spatiotemporal diversity of its mechanical cues has remained underutilised to date, preventing these mechanisms from being used to capture and decode the full spectrum of underlying physiological states. In this work, we define this heterogeneous set of mechanical signals as mechanodermal activity (MDA) and introduce the biomimetic metamaterial-based interface (BMMI), an engineered auxetic metamaterial substrate that reproduces the microrelief and mechanoreceptor architecture of natural skin. The BMMI allows selective capture of diverse MDA signals from adjacent skin regions with simultaneous signal amplification and noise suppression, and permits straightforward modulation to accommodate various scenarios. Combined with bespoke algorithms, the wireless BMMI device decodes MDA accurately and robustly for multimodal communication interfaces, unleashing applications in healthcare monitoring and human-machine interaction.