Skin+, Modular Programmable Skin

The skin is a natural interface between the inside and outside of our body. It holds us into shape, as well as it shapes the way we behave. Wearing clothes would significantly lower the interactivity of this interface. This research is focused to create a new “organ extension” of our skin by modularizing the haptic interaction of the covered skin. This new extension would allow creating a transparent medium beyond the worn fabric and would reshape our skin function by augmenting touch sensation through the mechanism of the combination of shape-memory alloy (SMA) actuators and the mechanical structures. This research has potential applications in creating new forms of reprogrammable haptic modules utilized on a wide area of skin in virtual reality (VR) environments.