Wearable Haptic Feedback Interfaces for Augmenting Human Touch

The rapid development of virtual and augmented reality has highlighted the growing need for haptic feedback interfaces, particularly in portable or wearable formats. These haptic feedback interfaces significantly enhance the immersive experiences of users across various domains, including social media, gaming, biomedical instrumentation, and robotics by utilizing sophisticated actuators to stimulate somatosensory receptors or afferent nerves beneath the skin, thereby creating tactile sensations. Despite the progress in various haptic feedback interfaces that employ diverse working mechanisms, each mode has limitations. This article comprehensively reviews the current state and potential opportunities of various haptic feedback interfaces with a particular focus on actuator technologies. Existing haptic feedback interfaces can be classified into three main categories: force-based haptic feedback interfaces, thermal haptic feedback interfaces, and electrotactile haptic feedback interfaces.