I was speaking few days ago with Matt Bross, chairman and CEO of Compass-EOS and member of the Industry Advisory Board of FDC, and he told me that 3D printing will be changing the world to an extent we are not able to imagine today.
I remembered his words as I read an article presenting the results of a research team at the University of Minnesota that developed a way to 3D print sensors on any surface, including skin.
They demonstrated the possibility of printing working sensors on curved surfaces (they also used a model of a hand to print on fingertips) layering silicon and silver plus insulating materials to create a touch sensor.
They foresee several applications for this process: providing robots with a skin that can sense, thus helping them in manipulating objects and moving around, in prosthetics, like a prosthetic hand, providing sensitivity to pressure and temperature as well as in surgical instrument to provide a much more accurate touch feeling to the surgeon using them. They found out that the sensor is so sensitive that it can measure pulse in real time.
Eventually they might be printed directly on our skin. Imagine, transforming our hand into a mouse…
Take a look at the clip showing the 3d printing at work.
This is also an example of a potential symbioses between an artefact, the sensor, and ourselves, our body.