A NEW type of tactile feedback system that stretches your skin rather than
pressing into it could help drivers keep their eyes on the road. It could turn a
car’s steering wheel into a touchy-feely instrument panel that transmits
dashboard data to a driver through their fingertips.
“Haptic” interfaces such as tactile-feedback gloves are already used to
convey information to people using virtual reality systems. But Vincent Hayward
at the Centre for Intelligent Machines at McGill University in Montreal, Canada,
believes the devices that exploit our skin’s sensitivity to stretching could
have far wider uses. “They could be used anywhere…
