After invisibility cloaks an “unfeelabillity cloak” is here

With the finger or a force measurement instrument, no information is obtained about the bottom side of the material.

In recent years we have heard about several types of invisibility cloaks that hide object from light, sound and heat. But none could prevent the object from being felt. Well, not any more as researchers in Germany have developed an invisibility cloak for touch.

The material consists of precisely calculated needle-shaped elements, such that strength depends on the location in a defined way.

While the metamaterial used in invisibility cloaks bend light in an unnatural way, the metamaterial used for this mechanical cloak redirects the physical force in a different way. The metamaterial is is a crysralline material and consists of needle shaped cones with meeting tips. These contacts points are precisely designed in a special way according to the mechanical properties this material is desired for. This structure makes any material underneath it absolutely undetectable through touch This invention was done by Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT) in Germany. More information about the creation and the mechanical forces is available in the research paper and the press release.

“It is like in Hans-Christian Andersen’s fairy tale about the princess and the pea. The princess feels the pea in spite of the mattresses. When using our new material, however, one mattress would be sufficient for the princess to sleep well,” Bückmann explains.

The semi-cylinder underneath the material is not felt by touch or any other measuring instrument 

This mechanical invisibility cloak is for now pure research, but it gives a way to producing materials with freely selectable mechanical properties. Creating a large amount of material that weirdly mitigates physical forces is actually quite easy. The machine KIT used to create the metamaterial, the 3D lithography Nanoscribe, only really works on the small scale. But, in future we may have the method of producing large swaths of the cloak. One most desirable use of this technology is to make very thin, light and comfortable camping mattresses and rugs that hide the underlying cables and pipelines from touch.