As technology design and educational experiences rapidly evolve, they often neglect one key element – touch. Current trends forecast the increase of haptic (touch) integration into consumer technologies, healthcare, and telerobotics, yet many technologies designed to date are heavily focused on visual and auditory capabilities. Similarly, many educational experiences have transitioned to digital/online platforms, and are also heavily shaped through vision and auditory senses without prioritizing touch. Haptics – the science and technology of touch – has the potential to address this gap, by creating an experience of touch through the application of forces, vibrations, or motions to a user via an interface or device. 

To this end, we in the CHROME Lab create wearable haptic devices that are incorporated into a variety of different settings utilizing the insights and intuitions of individuals with sensory disabilities or impairments. We leverage the knowledge of Blind and DeafBlind communities to infuse greater realism into the devices we design for recreating core building blocks of communication in remote settings. Additionally, we've begun to expand the application of haptics into short learning modules deployed in engineering courses to: 1) introduce burgeoning engineers to the concepts of haptics and inclusive design approaches, and 2) to bring tangibility into the classroom itself.