(Press-News.org) Immersing oneself in the virtual and augmented reality world is not only awesome for entertainment, it helps industries like manufacturing and medicine operate more efficiently. Nevertheless, as fast as the technology brings you into the world, the weight and stiffness of its hardware can just as easily remind you that you aren’t really golfing on the PGA tour or preparing for a surgery.
Inspired by Softbotics, researchers in the Soft Machines Lab at Carnegie Mellon University are developing wearable electronics to augment our senses with natural-feeling hardware. A paper published this week in Nature Electronics illustrates how a flexible, skin-mounted haptic interface can seamlessly bridge virtual and real-world experiences without unnecessary distractions.
“We are building imperceptible technology,” said Carmel Majidi, professor of mechanical engineering at Carnegie Mellon University and head of the Soft Machines Lab. “This is technology to assist us that won’t cause distractions, doesn’t require a big cognitive load, and won’t take away from other areas of our lives that require our full attention.”
Roughly the size of a thimble, the wireless, flexible, lightweight, and skin-mountable haptic interface is able to communicate with the wearer through eleven distinct, multi-directional movements. The device is powered by a soft, serpentine-structured shape memory alloy (SMA) actuator. An epoxy probe serves as a barrier between the actuator and user to protect the skin from any heat generated by the SMA.
“Typically if you want to replicate different motions, you need to have multiple actuators. We have achieved very rich tactile feedback using one single actuator which makes the device more robust and versatile,” said Majidi.
To demonstrate the device’s versatility, the team deployed it in three different scenarios:
Virtual reality
Equipped with a VR headset, a user wearing the device was able to feel physical sensations while interacting with a virtual object.
Daily activity
When the device was synchronized with a camera, a user was able to hang a painting on a wall in a desired location with guidance from the wearable. Differentiated tapping patterns replaced the infamous language cues, “Higher! Lower! To the left!” that typically accompany hanging home decor.
Object detection
Blindfolded, a user was able to find specific objects on a table via directional cues from the wearable. This demonstration highlights the potential for haptic interface devices to augment sensing capabilities for patients with visual impairments.
“The scalability, versatility, quick response time, discreetness, and ability to transcend language and cultural barriers makes our haptic feedback device a universally accessible solution,” said Majidi.
The team is hopeful that this technology can provide substantial benefits to everyday life. They plan to continue developing it for other applications like wearable human-machine interfaces. One day, it may enable humans to teach a robot to play a musical instrument or complete a precise surgery – or vice versa.
###
Additional contributors to this research from Carnegie Mellon University include Beomchan Kang, Nathan Zavanelli, Guo Ning Sue, Dinesh Patel, Subin Oh, and Michael Vinciguerra. In partnership with Saewoong Oh from Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology and Wei Dawid Wang from Hanyang University.
About Carnegie Mellon University
Carnegie Mellon, cmu.edu, is a private, internationally ranked research university with acclaimed programs spanning the sciences, engineering, technology, business, public policy, humanities, and the arts. Our diverse community of scholars, researchers, creators, and innovators is driven to make real-world impacts that benefit people across the globe. With a bold, interdisciplinary, and entrepreneurial approach, we do the work that matters.
About the College of Engineering
The College of Engineering at Carnegie Mellon University is a top-ranked engineering college that is known for our Advanced Collaboration culture in research and education. The College is well-known for working on problems of both scientific and practical importance. Our “maker” culture is ingrained in all that we do, leading to novel approaches and transformative results. Our acclaimed faculty have a focus on innovation management and engineering to yield transformative results that will drive the intellectual and economic vitality of our community, nation, and world.
END
Heart rate is one of the most basic and important indicators of health, providing a snapshot into a person’s physical activity, stress and anxiety, hydration level, and more.
Traditionally, measuring heart rate requires some sort of wearable device, whether that be a smart watch or hospital-grade machinery. But new research from engineers at the University of California, Santa Cruz, shows how the signal from a household WiFi device can be used for this crucial health monitoring with state-of-the-art accuracy—without the need ...
Faced with a worsening drug crisis, policymakers in recent years have made it much easier for doctors to prescribe the highly effective opioid addiction treatment buprenorphine. However, many patients may still struggle to find pharmacies carrying the treatment, finds new research led by the USC Schaeffer Center for Health Policy & Economics.
Buprenorphine was available at just 39% of U.S. retail pharmacies in 2023, a modest increase from 33% in 2017, according to the study published Sept. 2 in Health Affairs. But disparities in who can access the treatment have persisted. Pharmacies in predominantly Black neighborhoods (18%) and ...
A comprehensive study shows that California's CA Bridge program has successfully implemented opioid use disorder treatment services across more than 80% of the state's emergency departments, reaching over 165,000 patients and providing nearly 45,000 instances of buprenorphine treatment from July 2022 through December 2023 alone. The initiative proves that emergency departments can serve as a critical entry point for addiction care when provided with proper funding, training, and patient navigation support.
Why it matters
The opioid crisis ...
Researchers at MUSC Hollings Cancer Center have discovered a potentially powerful weapon in the fight against head and neck cancers. The new drug, still in preclinical studies, attacks cancer cells from within by damaging their mitochondria, the cells’ energy factories.
The study, published in Cancer Research, was led by Besim Ogretmen, Ph.D., associate director of Basic Science at Hollings and director of Hollings' Lipidomics Shared Resource.
The multidisciplinary research team aimed to suppress tumor growth ...
Clinicians’ ability to diagnose and treat chronic diseases is limited by scientific uncertainty around factors contributing to disease risk. A study published September 2nd in the open-access journal PLOS Biology by Drs. Emily Van Syoc, Emily Davenport, and Seth Bordenstein at The Pennsylvania State University, United States, uncovers evidence of the first ternary relationships between human genetic variation, variation in gut mycobiome, and risk of developing chronic disease.
Some gut fungi are implicated in intestinal diseases. However, ...
Medicines containing a type of PFAS or ‘forever chemical’ called fluorine are not leading to higher numbers of adverse drug reactions according to new data analysis.
In a new paper published in PLOS ONE today, researchers from the University of Birmingham studied data from the MHRA’s Yellow Card system on 13 drugs containing carbon-fluorine bonds as well as six drugs which were structurally similar but not containing this forever chemical.
Using five years of data from 2019-2024, the research team analysed the number of adverse drug reactions (ADRs) per 1 million medicines ...
Researchers from USDA’s Agricultural Research Service (ARS) and their university partners are helping U.S. tomato growers fight a devastating crop disease. Researchers found that a tomato line developed 30 years ago is showing good resistance to the emerging tomato brown rugose fruit virus (ToBRFV), a virus that has the potential to cause billions of dollars in damage to the tomato industry in the United States and worldwide.
ToBRFV infects tomato, pepper, and similar crops by distorting leaves and discoloring fruit, resulting in yield loss. The virus is seed-borne and overcomes the resistance genes in current commercial cultivars. It can easily spread when healthy ...
Small business owners are more likely to identify with and vote for right-wing parties, a new study in the British Journal of Political Science, published by Cambridge University Press reveals. The research suggests it is the experience of being a small business owner that leads people to adopt conservative views on government regulation.
The study, which analysed the political leanings of small business owners in the United States, also found that current business owners, but not past owners ...
Two Studies Published in the Journal of Thoracic Oncology Reveal New Variant of Mesothelioma
(September 2, 2025—Denver, Colo) Researchers working independently at the University of Hawaii Cancer Center and the National Cancer Institute have discovered, and validated, a new variant of mesothelioma that may lead to more successful treatments. The studies have been published in the Journal of Thoracic Oncology, the official journal of the International Association for the Study of Lung Cancer.
Mesothelioma is a rare and aggressive type of cancer that develops in the mesothelium, the thin layer of ...
Marine Resource Economics (MRE) is pleased to present the 2024 Outstanding Article Award to Y. Allen Chen and Alan C. Haynie for their article “Size-Targeting in the Bering Sea Pollock Catcher/Processor Fishery with Heterogeneous Incentives.”
Researchers Chen and Haynie (2024) conduct a novel analysis of the heterogeneous incentives to target different sizes of pollock in the U.S. Bering Sea fishery. By coupling empirical models of fishing revenue with a clustering approach, they group vessels by how strongly their ...
