Technology
Method to send messages through vibrations on skin developed

Researchers at Purdue University have developed a method to send messages in English by using vibrations on a person's skin. The device used works by playing a specific vibration assigned to a given English 'phoneme', or the smallest unit of sound, on a user's forearm. The device is further encoded to generate distinct sensations for each speech trait. Hong Z. Tan, Purdue professor of electrical and computer engineering, said she developed the haptic technology after being challenged by Facebook. 'They wanted to know if it was possible to transmit messages and speech through the skin. We thought it might be possible, and we could give it a try,' she said.