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Fan et al. Soft Sci 2024;4:11 https://dx.doi.org/10.20517/ss.2023.47 Page 13 of 16

performance standard system for functional leather can be established to standardize production and
performance standards. Finally, developing multifunctional sensing for leather composites can enable
leather to perceive the world similarly to human skin by combining machine learning to carry out human-
computer interactions.

In conclusion, as an emerging flexible intelligent biomaterial, leather composites have demonstrated
enormous potential for various applications, especially in the fields of sensing and safety protection. This
coincides with the safety and real-time sensing of some soft robots in hazardous environments. Therefore,
leather composites can be developed towards biomimetic, intelligent, and thermo-mechanical coupled
safety protection in the future. It is believed that this result can open up new research directions for the
design and safe use of soft robots.

DECLARATIONS
Authors’ contributions
Wrote the original draft: Fan Z, Sang M
Supervised, reviewed, and revised the manuscript: Leung KCF, Gong X, Xuan S

Availability of data and materials
Not applicable.

Financial support and sponsorship
Financial support from the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant Nos. 12072338, 12132016,
and 12202435), the Anhui’s Key R&D Program of China (202104a05020009), the Aviation Science
Foundation of China (20200029079004), the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities
(WK2480000007) is gratefully acknowledged.

Conflicts of interest
All authors declared that there are no conflicts of interest.

Ethical approval and consent to participate
Not applicable.

Consent for publication
Not applicable.

Copyright
© The Author(s) 2024.

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