• Whereas human tissues and organs are mostly soft, wet, and bioactive, machines are commonly hard, dry, and abiotic. Merging humans, machines, and their intelligence is of imminent importance in addressing grand societal challenges in health, energy, security, education, and happiness in life. However, merging humans and machines is extremely challenging due to their fundamentally contradictory properties.

  • Sensor systems are an important link between the physical and the digital world. Thin film sensors are a class of sensors that provide the opportunity to integrate sensor systems onto or into biological systems. Well-designed flexible sensors can lead to several paradigm changing applications in the fields of soft robotics, healthcare, IoT, smart cities, and so on. In this tutorial, we will discuss thin film sensors using piezoresistive transduction as an example.