Bioelastic State Recovery for Haptic Sensory Substitution

Special Lecture with
Yonggang Huang

Northwestern University

ABSTRACT
The rich set of mechanoreceptors found in human skin offers a versatile engineering interface for transmitting information and eliciting perceptions, potentially serving a broad range of applications in patient care and other important industries. Targeted multisensory engagement of these afferent units, however, faces persistent challenges, especially for wearable, programmable systems that need to operate adaptively across the body. Here Huang presents a miniaturized electromechanical structure that, when combined with skin as an elastic, energy-storing element, supports bistable, self-sensing modes of deformation. Targeting specific classes of mechanoreceptors as the basis for distinct, programmed sensory responses, this haptic unit can deliver both dynamic and static stimuli, directed as either normal or shear forces. Systematic experimental and theoretical studies establish foundational principles and practical criteria for low-energy operation across natural anatomical variations in the mechanical properties of human skin. A wireless, skin-conformable haptic interface, integrating an array of these bistable transducers, serves as a high-density channel capable of rendering input from smartphone-based 3D scanning and inertial sensors. Demonstrations of this system include sensory substitution designed to improve the quality of life for patients with visual and proprioceptive impairments.

SPEAKER
Yonggang Huang is the Achenbach Professor of Mechanical Engineering (50%), Civil and Environmental Engineering (50%), and Materials Science and Engineering (0%) at Northwestern University. He is interested in mechanics of stretchable inorganic electronics and mechanics-guided deterministic 3D assembly, and has published more than 700 journal papers, including 16 in Science and 10 in Nature. He is a member of the National Academy of Engineering, National Academy of Sciences, American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and a foreign member of Royal Society (London), Royal Society of Canada, Chinese Academy of Sciences, and four other academies in Europe and Canada. In 2024, the Society of Engineering Science established the Yonggang Huang Engineering Science Medal. In 2025, the Hagler Institute for Advanced Study at Texas A&M University established the John Rogers – Yonggang Huang Medal for Research Collaboration. He is the only tenured/tenure-track faculty member having received the Cole-Higgings Teaching Award twice in the award history at Northwestern University. He is also the only foreign member to serve as the chair of election committee in the more than 360-year history of the Royal Society.