The research team led by Dr. Dong Wang in Department of Industrial Engineering & Management, School of Mechanical Engineering at Shanghai Jiao Tong University and their collaborators at City University of Hong Kong and University of Electronic Science and Technology of China have published joint working journal paper titled by “Encoding of tactile information in hand via skin-integrated wireless haptic interface” in Nature Machine Intelligence (IF=25.898). Dr. Qingyun Huang, a postdoctoral fellow in the same department, is a co-first author of this journal paper.

This paper reports an ultra-thin and soft skin-integrated wireless haptic interface for encoding tactile information in human hand, which integrates flexible PCB to a sensor with a high-resolution electrodes array to cover an entire human hand via e-skin techniques. A reported soft, miniaturized and wireless electrotactile system (WeTac) can deliver programable current intensity through a hand to induce tactile sensation as well as calibrate and measure a personalized threshold of sensation. With mapped thresholds for different electrical parameters, virtual touching sensations can accurately be created and controlled by programming electrical stimulation signals. The reported WeTac system has shown prospective applications (VR/AR, human-machine interactions, education, medical service, etc.) with more vivid touching experience.

Dr. Qingyun Huang is focusing on interdisciplinary research on Micro/Nano/Bio sensors and statistical learning after joining Dr. Dong Wang’s group.

Paper Link: https://www.nature.com/articles/s42256-022-00543-y