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Conventional technologies for virtual and augmented reality simulate interactive experiences through visual and auditory stimuli. A technology that adds sensations of touch could find uses in areas from gaming to prosthetic feedback.
Xiao-ming Tao is at the Research Centre for Smart Wearable Technology, Institute of Textiles and Clothing, Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Kowloon, Hong Kong.
Human sensation includes the commonly known senses and less-recognized ones such as thirst, hunger and balance. Stimuli detected by sensory receptors are encoded into electrical signals that move along neural pathways to specific parts of the brain to be decoded into useful information. The whole process is complex. For instance, the sense of touch is a collection of several sensations, encompassing pressure, pain and temperature, and touch receptors are stimulated by a combination of mechanical, chemical and thermal energy. Until now, it has been a great challenge to incorporate sensations of touch into virtual and augmented reality. But in a paper in Nature, Yu et al. report a skin-integrated technology that applies pressure, vibration or motion to the user, enabling communication between the user and a machine for virtual and augmented reality (X. Yu et al.Nature575, 473–479; 2019).