Artificial Skin With Haptic Feedback Could Let You Feel VR

Artificial skin adapts to any morphology (via EPFL)

Haptic feedback helps elevate video games and smartphones by giving digital devices a heightened sense of touch.

Now, researchers at Switzerland’s École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne hope the buzzy technology—which replicates humans’ tactility—can improve medical rehab and virtual reality.

Two groups of EPFL scientists—led by Jamie Paik and Stéphanie Lacour—have teamed up to develop a soft, flexible artificial skin made of silicone and electrodes.

A soft artificial skin provides haptic feedback (via EPFL)

Using a system of soft sensors and actuators, the ersatz epidermis conforms to the exact shape of the wearer’s finger, for instance, and provides haptic feedback in the form of pressure and vibration.

That response can be adjusted in real time, to produce a sense of touch that is as realistic as possible.

“This is the first time we have developed an entirely soft artificial skin where both sensors and actuators are integrated,” lead study author Harshal Sonar said in a statement.

“This gives us closed-loop control, which means we can accurately and reliably modulate the vibratory stimulation felt by the user,” he continued. “This is ideal for wearable applications, such as for testing a patient’s proprioception [sense of self-movement and body position] in medical applications.”

Still in its infancy, EPFL’s artificial skin—which can be stretched up to four times its original length—vibrates as its actuators rapidly inflate and deflate.

Scientists have tested it on users’ fingers, but are still making improvements to the technology.

This artificial skin has the potential to instantaneously adapt to a wearer’s movements (via EPFL)

“The next step will be to develop a fully wearable prototype for applications in rehabilitation and virtual and augmented reality,” according to Sonar, who tipped the prototype for neuroscientific studies.

“It can be used to stimulate the human body while researchers study dynamic brain activity in magnetic resonance experiments,” he said.

The full study was published last week in the journal Soft Robotics.

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