Anchor Lede: We use all of our senses to experience the real world, but sight and sound dominate in the digital realm. Now researchers are trying to bring in the sense of touch.
Randy Atkins: Touch screens are made of smooth glass but Ed Colgate , a mechanical engineer at Northwestern University, wants your finger to feel more when you swipe across your phone.
Ed Colgate: From an engineering standpoint, well, the skin it turns out is a very complex sensory organwe feel vibrations, we feel textures, we feel force, we feel deformation.
Randy Atkins: Colgates efforts to make glass convey those feelings, starts by tricking your finger into experiencing the sensation of a push using
Ed Colgate: very high frequency vibrations that you dont feel or see or hear, but that nonetheless can help it turn into something that pushes on you.
Randy Atkins: Simulated bumps on the screen that can feel like, say, a keyboard popping up when you need to type. Such textured touch screens coul
