Could nanowire skin help robots do the dishes?

The dream of having a robot do the dishes may get a step closer with a touch-sensitive electronic skin made of flexible sensors, according to engineers at University of California at Berkeley. And presumably, it wouldn't get dishpan hands. In a letter published by Nature Materials, the researchers describe a low-power but robust material that would have some of the properties of human skin, such as the ability to feel and touch. Such artificial skin might also help restore limb feeling to amputees. The e-skin is based on inorganic single crystalline semiconductors.