Device for the skin to do part of the work of the eyes

Engineers have created a new thin, flexible device that gently adheres to the skin and stimulates it to provide sophisticated sensory experiences.

Although the new device obviously lends itself to video games and especially virtual reality, its creators also foresee applications in the field of health. For example, the device can help visually impaired people “feel” their surroundings. It can also make people with an amputated body part have a sense of touch in the prosthesis that replaces the missing part.

The device is the latest advance in wearable technology from bioelectronics pioneer John A. Rogers of Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois, United States.

The new advance achieved by Rogers, Matthew Flavin and other of their collaborators is another step in the direction of a previous system called “Epidermal VR”, a system connected to the skin that communicates tactile sensations through an array of vibrating actuators. miniature across large areas of skin, with fast wireless control.

The new miniaturized skin actuators are much more sophisticated than those in that system. In addition, they are capable of applying a constant force without requiring constant electrical energy.

The versatility of its design allows, among other things, the actuators to provide a gentle twisting movement on the surface of the skin to complement the ability to supply vertical force, thus adding more realism to the sensations.

The new device consists of a hexagonal array of 19 small magnetic actuators encapsulated in a thin, flexible silicone mesh material. Each actuator can provide different sensations, such as pressure, vibration and torque. Using the Bluetooth technology of a smartphone, the device receives data about the person’s environment to translate it into tactile sensations, replacing a visual sensation with a tactile one.

A user with the new device on her neck. (Photo: Northwestern University)

Although the device runs on a small battery, it saves energy thanks to an ingenious bistable design. This means that it can remain in one or the other of two stable positions without requiring a constant input of energy. The device only consumes power when the actuators change position. With this low-power design, the device can run longer on a single battery recharge.

To test the device, the researchers blindfolded healthy subjects to test their ability to avoid objects in their path using the sensory conversion provided by the device.

With just a short training period, the subjects using the device were able to avoid obstacles fluently. By replacing visual information with tactile information, the device works in a very similar way to how a blind person’s cane does, but providing much more information than said cane can provide.

Rogers, Flavin and their colleagues present the technical details of their new device in the academic journal Nature, under the title “Bioelastic state recovery for haptic sensory substitution.” (Fountain: NCYT by Amazings)