For years, screens have been getting better at showing and playing things that look and sound real.
But when it comes to touch, they are still surprisingly primitive.
Most phones and tablets can only vibrate, which can’t capture the rich detail your fingertips naturally feel when you touch fabric, wood, or rough stone.
Now, engineers at Northwestern University have created a tiny wearable device that could finally change that.
The new invention, called VoxeLite, is the first haptic device to achieve what the researchers describe as “human resolution.”
That means it can deliver touch sensations at the same level of detail and speed that your fingertips can naturally detect. Instead of simply buzzing, the device recreates texture, shape, and even subtle movements across the skin.
VoxeLite is ultra-thin, lightweight, flexible and soft. It wraps around the tip of a finger like a small bandage.
Once worn, it can make smooth digital surfaces—such as smartphone or tablet screens—feel textured and real. The research was led by Northwestern engineer Sylvia Tan and published in Science Advances.
“Touch is the last sense that still lacks a true digital version,” Tan explained. “We already have technologies that make images and sound feel real. Now, we’re taking a big step toward making touch feel real too.
And we designed it so people can wear it comfortably for long periods, much like wearing glasses.”
The human fingertip is incredibly sensitive. It can detect extremely tiny changes in surface texture and vibration.
Until now, most haptic devices failed because they were either too bulky, too slow, or not detailed enough. VoxeLite solves several of these challenges at once.
Inside the paper-thin material is a dense grid of microscopic nodes, similar to the pixels on a display screen.
These nodes act like “pixels of touch.” Each one can move independently and press gently into the skin, creating a precise pattern of sensation. In the highest-resolution versions, the nodes are placed just one millimetre apart—about the perfect spacing for human fingertips to detect individual points.
Each node is made of a soft rubber dome and a hidden inner electrode. When a small electrical voltage is applied, the node uses a force called electroadhesion to briefly grip a surface and tilt, pressing into the finger.
This creates the sensation of bumps, ridges, or grooves. Higher voltage increases friction and makes the surface feel rougher. Lower voltage decreases friction and makes it feel smoother or slippery.
The nodes can move up to 800 times per second, which covers almost the entire range of frequencies that human touch receptors can sense. This high speed is essential for making sensations feel smooth and realistic instead of jerky or artificial.
The device works in two main ways. In active mode, users swipe their finger across a grounded surface, such as a smartphone screen, and the nodes quickly tilt and move in patterns to produce virtual textures. In passive mode, the device becomes almost unnoticeable. Because it is so thin and soft, it does not block the finger’s natural ability to feel real objects.
In tests, people wearing VoxeLite performed surprisingly well. They could correctly identify the direction of virtual patterns—up, down, left, or right—with up to 87% accuracy. They could also recognize real-world textures such as leather, corduroy, and terry cloth with about 81% accuracy.
The potential uses of this technology are wide-ranging. It could help people with vision impairments by turning flat digital maps into raised, touchable paths. It could make virtual reality more immersive by letting users feel objects in a digital world. It could also change online shopping, allowing people to feel fabrics and materials before buying them.
In the future, VoxeLite could connect wirelessly to phones, tablets, or virtual-reality systems, just like Bluetooth headphones do today. A smooth piece of glass could suddenly feel like silk, denim, stone, or rubber, depending on what appears on the screen.
According to Tan, the real breakthrough is combining ultra-fine detail, fast response, and comfortable wearability in a single device. After years of tackling each challenge separately, this new approach brings everything together in a way that feels natural to the human body.
With VoxeLite, the digital world is no longer just something we see and hear — it is something we can finally feel.
