How metasurfaces aces will help robots to serve us better

This is mainly due to the risks of collision or interference with their close environment. #FITNESS redefines the sense of ‘#touch’ of devices, leading to safe and efficient human-device interaction. This is enabled by measuring disturbances in the ‘near field’ of advanced electromagnetic metasurfaces which can also be used for ‘far field’ communications. The new device will correspond to an adaptive skin of a few millimeter thickness that creates an electromagnetic “aura” over distances of a few centimeter providing near-field awareness.

#Metasurfaces look like a printed-circuit board; they have a ground plane, a thin dielectric layer (light brown in Figure) and, printed on top of it, a large number of subwavelength metallic patches (brown), which can be modelled as an “impedance sheet”. A pin-feed excites a surface wave, which becomes a leaky wave when a modulation appears in the shape and orientation of the small patches. The sensing stems for changes in those surface and leaky waves. Energy levels are safe, since they are about hundred times lower than those radiated by a cell phone.

Stay tuned to learn more thanks to #FITNESS project !