Overview
- Northwestern engineers report VoxeLite, a paper-thin, sub-gram wearable that matches the spatial and temporal acuity of the human fingertip.
- The device embeds tightly spaced tactile pixels in a stretchable latex sheet, with user-tested layouts at 1.6 millimeters and densest designs near 1 millimeter.
- Electroadhesion lets each node grip grounded surfaces and tilt to indent skin, modulating friction to render textures and directional cues.
- Nodes operate at up to roughly 800 hertz, and tests showed up to 87% accuracy for direction recognition and 81% for identifying real fabrics.
- Published in Science Advances, the work remains a research prototype as the team studies perception and explores potential pairings with phones, tablets, assistive tools, and VR.