Engineers at Northwestern University have developed a new wearable haptic device, called VoxeLite, that closely matches the tactile sensing ability of a human fingertip. The device is designed to provide users with detailed and realistic touch sensations on digital surfaces.
VoxeLite is described as ultra-thin, lightweight, and flexible. It wraps around the fingertip like a bandage and enables wearers to feel virtual textures and patterns on otherwise smooth screens. The research team says this technology could enhance virtual reality experiences, improve assistive devices for people with vision impairments, and offer more advanced touchscreen feedback.
“Touch is the last major sense without a true digital interface,” said Sylvia Tan of Northwestern University, who led the study. “We have technologies that make things look and sound real. Now, we want to make textures and tactile sensations feel real. Our device is moving the field toward that goal. We also designed it to be comfortable, so people can wear it for long periods of time without needing to remove it to perform other tasks. It’s like how people wear glasses all day and don’t even think about them.”
J. Edward Colgate, a professor at Northwestern’s McCormick School of Engineering and director of the National Science Foundation Engineering Research Center on Human AugmentatioN via Dexterity (HAND), commented: “This work represents a major scientific breakthrough in the field of haptics by introducing, for the first time, a technology that achieves ‘human resolution.’ It has the ability to present haptic information to the skin with both the spatial and temporal resolution of the sensory system.”
The device uses an array of small nodes embedded in a thin latex sheet; each node acts as an individual "pixel" of touch by pressing into the skin at high speeds in precise patterns using electroadhesion—a principle previously used by Colgate and Peshkin in earlier technology called TanvasTouch.
In tests with participants wearing VoxeLite, users were able to recognize virtual textures, patterns, and directional cues with up to 87% accuracy. They also identified different fabrics such as leather or corduroy with 81% accuracy.
The researchers believe future versions could connect wirelessly with smartphones or tablets—similar to how earbuds use Bluetooth—allowing flat screens to simulate textured interfaces or help visually impaired users navigate digital maps through touch.
“What makes this most exciting is combining spatial and temporal resolution with wearability,” Tan said. “People tend to focus on one of these three aspects because each one is such a difficult challenge. Our lab already solved temporal resolution with electroadhesion. Then, my challenge was to make it spatially distributed and wearable. It did take a while to get here. Now, we’re running studies to understand how humans actually receive and perceive this tactile information.”
The study was published in Science Advances on November 19.