A Novel Tactile Feedback Wristband Based on a Dielectric Elastomer

Abstract Smart wearable devices are becoming increasingly popular in daily life due to recent technological advances. They have various applications in the medical field (e.g., heart rate monitoring, blood pressure, blood oxygen), industrial field (e.g., worker assistance, gesture-based process control, recognition of unsafe conditions), and in the field of interactive virtual games (e.g., virtual reality, augmented reality). However, these devices must achieve their goals while meeting human needs during their use, such as wearability and adaptability. They must therefore be flexible, lightweight, and easy to understand with an intuitive interface. To fulfil these requirements, the challenge is to integrate flexible sensors and actuators into common clothing fabrics, minimizing the hardware needed and maximizing the wearer’s comfort. In this paper, we present a novel dielectric elastomer (DE)-based wearable device that can provide tactile feedback on its wearer. It consists of a pouch-like air pocket with a passive and an active silicone membrane (DE). This pouch or bubble is inflated with air pressure, which acts as the necessary bias mechanism pre-stretching both the passive and the active DE membrane. The device is designed in a way that the passive membrane side of the pouch is in contact with the wearer’s skin. In addition, to better understand how the passive membrane affects the overall system behavior, we provide experimental characterization studies on design parameters (i.e., thickness and initial pretension of the passive silicone membrane) for different internal pressure values. This results in the membranes having many layers with no pretension to minimize leakage.