New wearable device lets you touch fabric online, read braille, and more
Popular Science
22nd November 2025
New wearable device lets you touch fabric online, read braille, and more
VoxeLite can help you literally feel websites.
By Mack DeGeurin
A time traveler visiting from an earlier era might reasonably conclude that humanity has entered the age of cyborgs and cybernetics.
Pedestrians regularly walk down city streets with tiny computers in their hands and even smaller digital devices shoved in their ear canals. Virtual reality headsets, though still bulky, can transport users into convincingly realistic digital versions of far away museums and long past historical events. And yet, despite all this technology, people today still can’t really feel what it’s like to touch objects in their digital worlds.
A team of engineers from Northwestern University is trying to change that with the introduction of a new bandage-like finger wearable. The ultrathin haptic device called VoxeLite wraps around a user’s finger (any finger will work) and sends electric pulses through a grid of round nodes that function like a computer screen’s pixels for the sensation of touch. According to the team, the result is a device capable of adding physical sensations of touch and feel to digital experiences.
Additionally, trial participants reportedly experienced “human resolution” in digital spaces.
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