Convergence of Soft Electronics and Artificial Intelligence: From Materials to Intelligent Systems

Soft electronics are an emerging class of mechanically compliant platforms that enable conformal, skin-interfaced sensing and actuation on curvilinear and dynamic surfaces. These systems combine deformation-tolerant electrical functionality with soft contact mechanics, but their in-use performance is strongly influenced by time-varying interfaces, motion-induced artifacts, and the system burden associated with dense multimodal integration. Advances in soft electronics are now converging with artificial intelligence, which supports reliable information extraction from high-dimensional signals and enables on-device inference that tolerates variability across users and day-to-day conditions. Here, progress in this convergence from materials to intelligent systems is summarized. Material and interface foundations are introduced first, focusing on deformation-tolerant conductors, low-impedance biointerfaces, and breathable substrate strategies that support extended wear. Manufacturing and integration approaches are then discussed, highlighting scalable fabrication, multilayer interconnects, and energy-autonomous wireless operation that enable higher channel counts and multifunctional architectures. Learning-based pipelines are subsequently reviewed with emphasis on artifact suppression, nonideality compensation, multimodal inference, and efficient edge deployment. Finally, emerging directions including neuromorphic computing and in-sensor computing are discussed, together with current challenges and future opportunities toward deployable intelligent soft systems that operate continuously and reliably in everyday settings.