Haptic interface with flexible self-sensing actuators for wireless touch communication

At present, touch communication with each other mainly relies on direct physical contact. Imagine if touch communication could be realized in non-contact wireless ways just as sight and sound do, there could be a revolutionary change in the way that we feel the world. Here, we developed a haptic interface with self-sensing actuators for wireless touch communication. The flexible self-sensing actuator owns the functions in both tactile sensing and haptic feedback. When this soft haptic interface is conformally worn on the skin and dynamically pressed, the actuators on the interface will generate a response sensing voltage as tactile signal. When the actuator is actuated by an alternating voltage, the magnet in the actuator will generate a mechanical vibration as the haptic feedback. Via wireless Bluetooth transmission, one haptic interface could receive the tactile signal from the other haptic interface and then run synchronized haptic feedback. Thus, the touch communication is realized between two users in bidirectional way. This wireless touch communication also makes remote touch video possible, which will greatly enrich human social experience and shorten the social distance.