Just Like Human Skin, this Plastic Sheet can Sense and Heal

Artificial limbs have come a long way since the days of peg legs and hooks for hands. But one thing most of these prosthetics lack is a sense of touch.

Zhenan Bao intends to change that.Bao is a chemical engineer at Stanford University. Her long-term goal is to make an artificial skin out of plastic that can do most — if not all — of the things real skin can do.
Skin is pretty remarkable stuff. It keeps dangerous bacteria and germs out and our innards in. It’s flexible, it can sense when we touch things and it can heal itself when cut.

From our very good friends over at npr.org