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eAir sensors, the gold strips on the round panel, mimic the lotus leaf impact, a phenomenon the place water droplets roll of the leaf’s floor. | Source: NUS
Researchers on the National University of Singapore (NUS) have developed eAir, an aero-elastic stress sensor impressed by lotus leaf’s water-repelling buildings. eAir sensors provide elevated precision and reliability for medical functions over conventional sensors.
Conventional stress sensors typically battle with accuracy and consistency. They can return various outcomes when the identical stress is utilized repeatedly or overlook refined modifications in stress. Additionally, they’re sometimes created from stiff and mechanically rigid supplies.
The NUS analysis staff needed to handle these drawbacks in stress sensing and drew inspiration from a pure phenomenon referred to as the lotus leaf impact, the place water droplets simply roll off the floor of lotus leaves. This occurs due to the lotus leaves’ minuscule, water-repelling buildings.
The staff mimicked the lotus leaf impact by reimagining the water-repelling capabilities of the lotus leaf as a pressure-sensing instrument. The eAir sensor has an air spring design, wherein the sensor homes a trapped layer of air. This air types an air-liquid interface upon contact with the sensor’s liquid.
Aso, as exterior stress will increase, the air layer compresses. A floor therapy permits frictionless motion of the interface throughout the sensor, which triggers a change in electrical indicators that precisely replicate the exerted stress.
“The sensor, akin to a miniature ‘capacity meter’, can detect minute pressure changes — mirroring the sensitivity of a lotus leaf to the extremely light touch of a water droplet,” Benjamin Tee, lead researcher and an affiliate professor from the NUS College of Design and Engineering and NUS Institute for Health Innovation & Technology, mentioned.
eAir units might be made a couple of millimeters in measurement, which is similar to the scale of current stress sensors. This know-how might doubtlessly be used to carry out laparoscopic surgical procedures by enabling tactile suggestions for surgeons, which leads to extra exact manipulation of affected person tissues.
“When surgeons perform minimally-invasive surgery such as laparoscopic or robotic surgery, we can control the jaws of the graspers, but we are unable to feel what the end-effectors are grasping. Hence, surgeons have to rely on our sense of sight and years of experience to make a judgment call about critical information that our sense of touch could otherwise provide,” Dr. Kaan Hung Leng, a advisor for the Department of General Surgery on the National University Hospital, Ng Teng Fong General Hospital and NUS Yong Loo Lin School of Medicine, mentioned.
This machine may be used to enhance affected person experiences in the case of managing brain-related circumstances, starting from extreme complications to potential mind harm. For instance, it might provide a much less invasive technique of monitoring intracranial stress (ICP), an necessary well being metric for individuals with neurological circumstances.
The staff’s findings had been lately revealed within the journal Nature Materials. The NUS staff is laying the groundwork for collaborations with key gamers within the medical discipline and has additionally filed a patent for the eAir sensor know-how in Singapore.