All-in-One sensation-actuation integrated soft devices for bioinspired active tactile perception.

Abstract

In living organisms, sensing and actuation processes are inherently integrated, forming the foundation for autonomous control and active interaction with the surrounding environment. By contrast, in most existing artificial device systems, sensors and actuators operate as separate functional units, lacking seamless architectural and mechanical integration. Herein, we present an all-in-one sensation-actuation integrated soft device capable of active exploration and tactile hardness evaluation. Enabled by a hollow bilayer architecture, the somatosensory actuator achieves enhanced thermal actuation performance with bending deformation of up to 183° at 70 °C. Notably, a carbon-based conductive composite with an ultralow temperature coefficient (ΔR/R0 ≤ 0.08 over 30-100 °C) simultaneously functions as a Joule heater and somatosensory resistive element while intrinsically suppressing thermally induced interference. Integrated with a lightweight in-plane iontronic sensor (0.19 g), the all-in-one device accomplishes multimodal sensory perception of somatosensory resistive monitoring and exteroceptive capacitive detection. Experimental demonstrations confirm its biological capability for rat-whisker-inspired active spatial exploration, contact state differentiation, and finger-inspired active tactile perception for object hardness recognition and non-destructive fruit maturity evaluation. The incorporation of sensation-actuation capabilities into an all-in-one soft device holds immense potential in bionic intelligence for human-machine interaction, wearable robotics and smart agriculture.