Wireless sensing with smart skins

The ever-increasing need for perpetual ubiquitous cognition of our environment prompts the integration of numerous unobtrusive, extremely low-cost and passively powered wireless sensors into our surroundings. Smart skins, i.e. thin layers of modified materials on top of surfaces that surround our every-day lives, constitute ideal such sensor candidates for the ubiquitous awareness vision. In this paper we are presenting three different types of highly sensitive smart skin sensors for identity and genuineness authentication and seal proof, large metallic structural strain and crack detection and chemical gas sensing of ammonia and nitrogen dioxide. These low-profile smart skin prototypes share not only all the aforementioned desired characteristics but also exhibit high levels of accuracy and reliability in a flexible and rugged design.