PhantomTouch: Creating an Extended Reality by the Illusion of Touch using a Shape-Memory Alloy Matrix

With the rise of VR applications, the ability to experience physical touches becomes progressively important to increase immersion. In this paper, we propose PhantomTouch, a wearable forearm augmentation, that enables recreation of natural touch sensation by applying shear forces onto the skin. In contrast to commonly used vibration-based haptics, our approach consists of arranging light-weight and stretchable 3 × 3cm plasters in a matrix onto the skin. Individual plasters were embedded with lines of shape-memory alloy (SMA) wires to control shear forces. The matrix arrangement of the plasters enables the illusion of a phantom touch, for instance, feeling a wrist grab or an arm stroke.