Fig. 1: Illustration of the bioinspired flexible electronic antenna (E-Antenna) for robots tactile perception.

A The schematic of insect’s vision-free wall-following navigation behavior: The insect’s antenna converts mechanical stimuli from its surroundings into neural signals through deformation, allowing the brain to extract environmental information from tactile input to guide its locomotion. B The proposed bioinspired E-Antenna sensory system with a highly integrated design, featuring a flexible artificial antenna with partial magnetization and segmented flexibility, a compact data processing board, and a sequential neural network for tactile perception. C Illustration of E-Antenna’s fundamental sensing principle: similar to the biological antenna, the artificial antenna utilizes deformation to sense the direction and magnitude of applied loads. (i) The unloaded state of the antenna and the original magnetic field distribution; (ii) Antenna deforms under a load, resulting in the deflection of its magnetic field; (iii) A larger load in the opposite direction leads to a greater reverse deflection of the magnetic field. D E-Antenna can be made in multiple scales for different robots and applications: (i) Mounting of a centimeter-scale E-Antenna on a mobile robot for insect-like vision-free wall-following navigation; (ii) Integration of a millimeter-scale E-Antenna in a cleaning robot for floor classification via tactile texture perception; (iii) Incorporation of a larger E-Antenna into robotic arms for conformal manipulation or surface mapping.