Wearable haptic devices, which provide touch-based feedback, can provide more realistic experiences in virtual reality, assist with rehabilitation, and create new opportunities for silent communication. Currently, most of these devices rely on vibration, as pressure-based haptics have typically required users to wear stiff exoskeletons or other bulky structures.
Now, researchers at Stanford Engineering have designed a comfortable, flexible knit sleeve, called Haptiknit, that can provide realistic pressure-based haptic feedback. Their design, published Dec. 18 in Science Robotics, shows that pressure may be more effective than vibration for some applications and is the first step toward a new category of haptic devices.
"A device like this opens up a lot of new possibilities for user interfaces - how we experience virtual environments, how we experience remote communication," said Allison Okamura, the Richard W. Weiland Professor of Engineering at Stanford and senior author on the paper. "It's much more lightweight, wearable, and comfortable."
A knit solution
Okamura and her colleagues designed a battery-powered pneumatic system with pressure actuators that were essentially small, inflatable pouches that could be rapidly filled with air. But they needed a way to hold those pouches against the skin without using a clunky exoskeleton.
"If you put air into a balloon next to your skin but don't anchor it there, it's going to expand in all directions," said Cosima du Pasquier, a postdoctoral researcher at Stanford and first author on the paper. "You're going to waste most of the inflation potential."
Du Pasquier, who makes clothes as a hobby, realized that knit fabric might hold the answer. The researchers designed a soft textile that would be stiff in some areas - creating an inflexible backing to hold the pressure actuators against the skin - and flexible where needed to allow for movement and comfort.
They worked with a team at MIT's Soft Assembly Lab to manufacture the Haptiknit sleeve prototype on a knitting machine, with space for eight actuators arranged in two rows. Most of the sleeve was knit from nylon and cotton, but the areas backing each actuator also included a thermoplastic fiber. Once the knitting was done, the researchers used heat to melt the thermoplastic fibers and cause them to harden, stiffening those areas.
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Demo video of the "Knit Haptic Pneumatic Sleeve" | Video credit: Skylar Tibbits, MIT Self-Assembly Lab; Image credit: Susan Williams, MIT Self-Assembly Lab
