Gerling Touch Lab

Nice story and Q&A with Chang Xu! (LINK)

We don’t understand how our fingers feel material softness — for example, how do we know a peach is ripe? Touch permeates our lives, yet we don’t design technology to use our natural ability to differentiate objects. Chang Xu, a systems engineering Ph.D. student working in associate professor Greg Gerling’s Touch Lab, is studying the mechanisms underlying our sense of touch in the natural world to improve technologies ranging from consumer electronics to prosthetic hands and robotic-assisted surgery.