Miniaturization of mechanical actuators in skin-integrated electronics for haptic interfaces

Abstract

Skin-integrated electronics, also known as electronic skin (e-skin), are rapidly developing and are gradually being adopted in biomedical fields as well as in our daily lives. E-skin capable of providing sensitive and high-resolution tactile sensations and haptic feedback to the human body would open a new e-skin paradigm for closed-loop human–machine interfaces. Here, we report a class of materials and mechanical designs for the miniaturization of mechanical actuators and strategies for their integration into thin, soft e-skin for haptic interfaces. The mechanical actuators exhibit small dimensions of 5 mm diameter and 1.45 mm thickness and work in an electromagnetically driven vibrotactile mode with resonance frequency overlapping the most sensitive frequency of human skin. Nine mini actuators can be integrated simultaneously in a small area of 2 cm × 2 cm to form a 3 × 3 haptic feedback array, which is small and compact enough to mount on a thumb tip. Furthermore, the thin, soft haptic interface exhibits good mechanical properties that work properly during stretching, bending, and twisting and therefore can conformally fit onto various parts of the human body to afford programmable tactile enhancement and Braille recognition with an accuracy rate over 85%.