Coaxial Hydrogel Optical Fibre Skin for Interference‐Free Multimodal Tactile Perception
Abstract
ABSTRACT Flexible photonic fibers enable precise, interference‐free multimodal tactile sensing in wearable interfaces, owing to their intrinsic immunity to electromagnetic interference and cross‐modal coupling, together with rapid response. Until now, optical fibers that simultaneously exhibit mechanical robustness, signal decoupling, and environmental stability remain scarce, and system‐level integration is even rarer. Inspired by the distributed sensory arrangement of jellyfish tentacles, we propose a photonic skin composed of coaxially structured hydrogel optical fibers, in which pressure and temperature signals are routed through independent photonic and ionic channels for interference‐free multimodal sensing. The stretchable, highly reproducible, refractive‐index‐matched core‐cladding photonic fiber was constructed by continuous coaxial spinning with in situ photopolymerization. It resolves the long‐standing trade‐off between mechanical stretchability, low‐loss optical guiding, and temperature/humidity robustness in hydrogel fibers. The assembled sensing skin achieves high pressure and temperature sensitivity with a sub‐10‐ms response, surpassing existing benchmarks. It integrates with a lightweight, flexible printed circuit and multimodal tactile fusion machine‐learning architecture to form a wearable system, enabling wireless control, adaptive gesture recognition (99.21% accuracy), and multimodal object classification (99.22% accuracy). This work presents a fully integrated photonic skin platform bridging material‐level signal decoupling and system‐level multimodal perception for intelligent tactile interfaces in complex environments.
Article Details
Authors (20)
Xuyao Zhou
Flexible Photonic Chip International Innovation Center of Guangdong‐Hong Kong‐Macao Greater Bay Area Future Institute of Technology School of Optoelectronic Science and Engineering South China Normal University Guangzhou China
Yiqin Guo
Flexible Photonic Chip International Innovation Center of Guangdong‐Hong Kong‐Macao Greater Bay Area Future Institute of Technology School of Optoelectronic Science and Engineering South China Normal University Guangzhou China
Zhenyu Chen
Kaitian Yu
Flexible Photonic Chip International Innovation Center of Guangdong‐Hong Kong‐Macao Greater Bay Area Future Institute of Technology School of Optoelectronic Science and Engineering South China Normal University Guangzhou China
Chengyu Yang
Kaixuan Lin
Flexible Photonic Chip International Innovation Center of Guangdong‐Hong Kong‐Macao Greater Bay Area Future Institute of Technology School of Optoelectronic Science and Engineering South China Normal University Guangzhou China
Weiting Chen
Xuan Liu
School of Energy and Power Engineering
Penglin Lyu
Flexible Photonic Chip International Innovation Center of Guangdong‐Hong Kong‐Macao Greater Bay Area Future Institute of Technology School of Optoelectronic Science and Engineering South China Normal University Guangzhou China
Tingli Hu
Flexible Photonic Chip International Innovation Center of Guangdong‐Hong Kong‐Macao Greater Bay Area Future Institute of Technology School of Optoelectronic Science and Engineering South China Normal University Guangzhou China
Yuzhi Qin
Flexible Photonic Chip International Innovation Center of Guangdong‐Hong Kong‐Macao Greater Bay Area Future Institute of Technology School of Optoelectronic Science and Engineering South China Normal University Guangzhou China
Yupeng Guo
Wenqi Han
Zuping Lyu
Flexible Photonic Chip International Innovation Center of Guangdong‐Hong Kong‐Macao Greater Bay Area Future Institute of Technology School of Optoelectronic Science and Engineering South China Normal University Guangzhou China
Mingming Rong
College of Chemistry and Molecular Sciences Henan University Kaifeng China
Bo Fang
Xiongjian Huang
Jiulin Gan
State Key Laboratory of Luminescent Materials and Devices School of Materials Science and Engineering South China University of Technology Guangzhou China
Qianyi Guo
Flexible Photonic Chip International Innovation Center of Guangdong‐Hong Kong‐Macao Greater Bay Area Future Institute of Technology School of Optoelectronic Science and Engineering South China Normal University Guangzhou China
Zhongmin Yang