From “Can You Build a Human Body?” an interactive BBC feature that explains how close we are to artificially creating a complete array of functioning organs. From the section on skin:

“One of the greatest challenges in bionics is to replicate skin – its ability to feel pressure, temperature and pain is incredibly difficult to reproduce.

Prof Ali Javey, from the University of California, Berkeley, is trying to develop an ‘e-skin’ a material that ‘mechanically has the same properties as skin.’ He has already woven a web of complex electronics and pressure sensors into a plastic which can bend and stretch.

Getting those sensors to send data to a computer could give a sense of touch to robots.”

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Printing electronic skin: