Highly pixelated, untethered tactile interfaces for an on-skin telehaptic system

Abstract

For highly immersive telehaptic applications, skin-integrated, untethered, and highly pixelated transducer devices that can record and generate tactile stimuli are required. Here, we propose a skin-conformable tactile sensor and actuator array with high spatial resolution of 1.8 mm for realising untethered tactile communication on human skin. The tactile sensors are designed to exhibit ultra-flexibility and bimodal sensitivity to static and dynamic pressure. The actuators are miniaturised to sub-millimetre scale to provide sophisticated, high spatiotemporal resolution tactile feedback over a centimetre square area of the fingertip with the capacity to generate vibrotactile feedback under an external load of up to 529 kPa. Short time Fourier transform analysis showed that our telehaptic system can transmit various types of tactile stimuli, such as the shape of objects and letters, textures of fabrics, and vibration patterns with high fidelity.