Researchers around the world are in the midst of developing artificial skins essential to modern robotics, prosthetic limbs, and other applications. Designed to emulate the most practical properties of human skin, some artificial skin technologies have managed to surpass the sensory capabilities of living tissues. One such technology is a temperature-sensitive electronic film, which has paralleled the record performance of the world's most sensitive heat-detecting organism, the Crotalinae , commonly know as the pit viper. While in the process of fabricating materials for synthetic wood, a team of researchers discovered a film made of pectin, a sugar molecule responsible for the temperature sensitivity in plants, could exhibit an electrical response to changes in temperature when enriched with positively-charged calcium ions. This finding led to the study " Biomimetic temperature-sensing layer for artificial skins " by senior author Chiara Daraio , et al., which w...