Enlarge / A movable robotic face covered with living human skin cells. (credit: Takeuchi et al.)

In a new study, researchers from the University of Tokyo, Harvard University, and the International Research Center for Neurointelligence have unveiled a technique for creating lifelike robotic skin using living human cells. As a proof of concept, the team engineered a small robotic face capable of smiling, covered entirely with a layer of pink living tissue.

The researchers note that using living skin tissue as a robot covering has benefits, as it's flexible enough to convey emotions and can potentially repair itself. "As the role of robots continues to evolve, the materials used to cover social robots need to exhibit lifelike functions, such as self-healing," wrote the researchers in the study.

Shoji Takeuchi, Michio Kawai, Minghao Nie, and Haruka Oda authored the study, titled "Perforation-type anchors inspired by skin ligament for robotic face covered with living skin," which is due for July publication in Cell Reports Physical Science. We learned of the study from a report published earlier this week by New Scientist.

Enlarge / Upper left: a reconstruction of Diadcetes Below: false color images of its foot and tail prints. Right: the section of the tail that left the print. (credit: Voigt et. al./Urweltmuseum GEOSKOP.)

Their feet left copious traces in muddy Permian floodplains, leaving tracks scattered across ancient sediments. But in one slab of such trackways, scientists uncovered something more: the trace of an animal’s tail as it dragged across the ground. Strikingly, these tail prints come complete with scale impressions—at 300 million years old, they’re among the earliest scale impressions we have.

This may seem small, but it shows us that some of the hardened skin structures necessary for our ancestors to survive on land had evolved much earlier than previously suspected. A paper published in Biology Letters this past May describes this discovery in detail.

A rare find

The particular slab holding these traces was discovered in 2020 at the Piaskowiec Czerwony quarry in Poland. Mining had stopped to enable paleontologists to search the red sandstone rocks for fossils. Gabriela Calábková described climbing upon “a huge pile of rubble” only to discover a sizable slab of fossil tracks at the very top. There, among one set of footprints, was something new.