A team of researchers at King Abdullah University of Science and Technology in Saudi Arabia announced that a strong, flexible and sensitive artificial skin has been developed that can repair itself up to 5,000 times, and can be used in future prosthetics.

According to what was published in the journal Science Advances, the new innovation is known as “electronic skin,” and the research team says its uses could be developed in the future to monitor people’s health or the structural condition of airplanes, because it is as sensitive as human skin.

The researchers used a hydrogel reinforced with silica nanoparticles to create a “flexible surface” and combined it with a two-dimensional maxin sensor of titanium carbide using highly conductive nanowires.

The researchers found that by pre-stretching the hydrogel in all directions, then applying a layer of nanowires and controlling their release, pathways were created to the sensor layer that remained intact even if the material was stretched to 28 times its original size.

The researchers suggest that an innovative electronic skin prototype can sense objects from eight inches away and respond to stimuli in less than a tenth of a second.

Meanwhile, the new electronic skin is so sensitive that it can distinguish between handwriting written on its surface and bear 5,000 signs of distortion, then recover within about a quarter of a second.