Flexible AI computer chips promise wearable health monitors that protect privacy

My colleagues and I have developed a flexible, stretchable electronic device that runs machine-learning algorithms to continuously collect and analyze health data directly on the body. The skin-like sticker, developed in my lab at the University of Chicago's Pritzker School of Molecular Engineering, includes a soft, stretchable computing chip that mimics the human brain. To create this type of device, we turned to electrically conductive polymers that have been used to build semiconductors and transistors. These polymers are made to be stretchable, like a rubber band. Rather than working like a typical computer chip, though, the chip we're working with, called a neuromorphic computing chip, functions more like a human brain.