The first time a fingertip meets VoxeLite, the feeling is strangely familiar. The surface under your finger is flat and smooth, yet your skin reports ridges, bumps and even the drag of a rough fabric.

If you could feel a digital texture as vividly as touching real fabric — the rough weave of corduroy, the smoothness of leather — what would that change about how we interact with machines? At ...

By Stephen Beech A new bandage-like device allows people to "feel" textures through touchscreens. The soft, stretchable material wraps around a fingertip to give digital touch the same realism people ...

In those devices, an applied electric field alters friction to create the illusion of texture, but it does not involve any moving parts. Dr. Colgate says the new technology applies electrostatic ...