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Wearable haptic devices transmit information via touch receptors in the skin, yet devices located on parts of the body with high densities of receptors, such as fingertips and hands, impede interactions. Other locations that are well‐suited for wearables, such as the wrists and arms, suffer from lower perceptual sensitivity. The emergence of textile‐based wearable devices introduces new techniques of fabrication that can be leveraged to address these constraints and enable new modes of haptic interactions. This article formalizes the concept of “multiscale” interaction, an untapped paradigm for haptic wearables, enabling enhanced delivery of information via textile‐based haptic modules. In this approach, users choose the depth and detail of their haptic experiences by varying their interaction mode. Flexible prototyping methods enable multiscale haptic bands that provide both body‐scale interactions (on the forearm) and hand‐scale interactions (on the fingers and palm). A series of experiments assess participants’ ability to identify pressure states and spatial locations delivered by these bands across these interaction scales. A final experiment demonstrates the encoding of three‐bit information into prototypical multiscale interactions, showcasing the paradigm's efficacy. This research lays the groundwork for versatile haptic communication and wearable design, offering users the ability to select interaction modes for receiving information.
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This content will become publicly available on April 1, 2026
Wearable multi-sensory haptic devices
Haptic devices enable communication via touch, augmenting visual and auditory displays, or by offering alternative channels of communication when vision and hearing are unavailable. Because of the different types of haptic stimuli that are perceivable by users — vibration, skin stretch, pressure and temperature, among others — devices can be designed to communicate complex information by delivering multiple types of haptic stimuli simultaneously. These multi-sensory haptic devices are often designed to be wearable and have been developed for use in a wide variety of applications, including communication, entertainment and rehabilitation. Multi-sensory haptic devices present unique challenges to designers because human perceptual acuity can vary widely depending on the wearable location on the body and/or the heterogeneity in human perceptual performance, particularly when multiple cues are presented simultaneously. Additionally, packaging haptic systems in a wearable form factor presents its own engineering challenges such as cue masking, device mounting and actuator capabilities, among others. Thus, in this Review, we discuss the state-of-the-art and specific obstacles present in the field to produce multi-sensory devices that enhance the human capacity for haptic interaction and information transmission.
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- Award ID(s):
- 2144809
- PAR ID:
- 10608529
- Publisher / Repository:
- Springer Nature
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- Nature Reviews Bioengineering
- Volume:
- 3
- Issue:
- 4
- ISSN:
- 2731-6092
- Page Range / eLocation ID:
- 288 to 302
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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