IIIT Hyderabad, KAUST researchers develop low-cost flexible sensors for wearables and roboticsResearchers at IIIT Hyderabad and KAUST have developed low-cost, flexible capacitive pressure sensors using PDMS foam and cotton textiles. Published in the IEEE Journal on Flexible Electronics, the study demonstrates how bubble-induced PDMS foam combined with conductive textile electrodes can be engineered into reliable and scalable pressure sensors. The sensors show high repeatability, making them especially promising for human–machine interaction, surgical robotics, and tactile wearables. “Our fabrication approach uses everyday materials like cotton textiles and polymer foam, and still delivers performance comparable to state-of-the-art flexible sensors,” said Dr Aftab M Hussain, Associate Professor at IIIT Hyderabad. The research team also synthesised polypyrrole-coated conductive cotton textile to use as electrodes using a simple chemical oxidative process and integrated them with bubble-trapped polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) to create a compressible capacitive structure.