Continuous and dependable underwater motion monitoring and communication are crucial for ensuring the safety of swimming, divers and underwater workers. We have developed a coral-inspired piezoresistive electronic skin (Melamine sponge-poly(pyrrole)-polydimethylsiloxane, MS-ppy-PDMS e-skin) for motion monitoring and underwater communication. The microstructure of the coral-like poly(pyrrole) and the PDMS acting as “limestone” make MS-ppy-PDMS e-skin superhydrophobic, stable (up to 80,000 cycles and acid and alkali resistance), and sensitive over a wide pressure sensing range (1–2,000 kPa). Moreover, MS-ppy-PDMS e-skin exhibits remarkable breathability, photothermal antibacterial efficacy, and biocompatibility, thereby increasing the comfort of wear while maintaining its outstanding sensing functionality. MS-ppy-PDMS e-skin exhibited dependable electrical signals output in motion monitoring tests on land and underwater. Most crucially, the combination of underwater communication commands captured by MS-ppy-PDMS e-skin with a multilayer perceptron (MLP) neural network allows for rapid and precise analysis and recognition, achieving a 99.38% accuracy rate in identifying underwater communication commands. This enables the realization of intelligent perception function, and is expected to further advance the development of human brain-like cognitive systems. Overall, the coral bionic MS-ppy-PDMS e-skin demonstrates tremendous application potential in the fields of motion monitoring and underwater communication.
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