When engaging in virtual reality (VR) and manipulating an object, users want to be able to feel what they’re touching in virtual space. A hard object needs to feel hard and a soft object needs to feel soft; mechanisms that can accurately deliver these touch sensations are called haptic systems.
Haptic systems achieve their goals through a number of approaches. One method involves the use of components called electroadhesive clutches. An electroadhesive clutch uses electrical voltage to create adhesion between two electrodes. The mechanism is typically made up of two overlapping, metallized electrodes separated by a non-metal, insulating material called a dielectric. The sheets can slide past one another when there is no electric field present, but when a voltage is applied, an electric field creates a strong attraction across the sheets, causing them to stick together in the same way your hair sticks to a balloon when you create an electric charge through rubbing, only much stronger. Gloves used in VR haptic systems can be embedded with these electroadhesive clutches to simulate touch sensations by changing from stiff to flexible and vice versa.
However, electroadhesion through the traditional dielectric setup requires anywhere from 100 to 10,000 volts of electricity to operate, levels that can be unsafe for direct human use. Additionally, their ability to switch back and forth from stiff to flexible is limited. Improving these clutches would not only improve a user’s experience in virtual reality, but could improve other applications such as robotic exoskeletons and prosthetics, finger-gripping systems, and shape-shifting robots.
Read more here: https://engineering.wisc.edu/news/a-new-electroadhesive-clutch-to-improve-haptics-in-virtual-reality-gloves-and-beyond/