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New Material Responds to Touch Pressure
Vassily Overveight writes "CNN has an interesting article about a lightweight, malleable conductor named Peratech that can detect, measure and respond to a range of pressures "from the lightest touch to the heaviest hammer blow," and that can be incorporated into fabrics, plastics, and other solids. Listed potential applications include roll-up keyboards (hey, I have news for them: it's already been done) and clothing that monitors bodily functions." Hey its saturday, what do you want ;)
... doesn't mean it can't be done better.
New: ceramic knives! Nah, stone tools have been done before.
New: silver halide photography! Nah, oil paintings by a master are better.
New: cloth rollup keyboard! Nah, thick rubber keyboards rule.
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This stuff will certainly be used by an aircraft manufacturer. Determining surface pressures on test aircraft is a really big deal. Wing loading and all that. If the stuff produces repeatable and linear output it should be just the thing. I recall performing some impact tests on a coating that acted like the multi-layer forms we've all used. Micro-capsules rupture under pressure and produce a color change. Problem was very limited use - one shot then recoat the model. The traditional way is to use prssure tranducers plumbed to a tiny port on the skin. They work but they're pretty expensive and they only tell you what's happening at that point. This new plastic sounds perfect.
As long as the voltages are kept low it shouldn't be a problem. You wouldn't notice a few volts shorting across your skin. 9 volts is barely at the detectable level. Place your toung across the terminals of a 9 volt battery. Most circutry is 5 volts or 3.3 volts. I expect it to lower to about 1 to 1.5 volts in the future.
> speed control of a motor by button pressure
Such a control would be quite hard to use, at least at first. Most tasks we are familiar are require positional accuracy, not force accuracy. Witness the popularity of mice over joysticks.
Ryan
In absolute terms, true. When you start thinking about negative-feedback applications such as a "power-assist" to an arm or leg, though, this stuff would make a great sensor material. Current negative-feedback systems use a series of switches; this stuff would allow much finer control of the motion because it could tell between a slight adjustment (very small force) and a sweep of the arm (very large force). Further, as the force of the feedback falls, you can slow down the motion actuator in anticipation of a stop or reversal, which reduces the oscillation that could happen between operator and extension.
It's 'Edward' R. Murrow. Perhaps you can get a job as a /. fact checker.
Packing tape that warns when it is approaching crush or impact thresholds and sets an externally visible and audible alarm when those thresholds are exceeded.
Link the tape to a sort of "packaging passport", a device that registers (maybe by a barcode reader or similar tech) who handled it and where.
You could then print a report of the handling history when you get your package.
"No, I will not sign for this, because storeman #41 dropped it at your Minnesota warehouse at 10:43 AM on Wednesday."
Sure, it's not for small ticket items, but I think it'd be worthwhile for scientific/medical instruments, big-arse servers, etc. You could also employ similar techniques for the seals on those big steel shipping containers.
Ahh - My eye!
The doctor said I'm not supposed to get Slashdot in it!
This would provide a surprisingly simple way to build an electronic keyboard with weighted keys to feel like piano keys, and a pressure sensitive sensor so that they *play like piano keys.
From the description it should be much more sensitive than piezoelectrics. Think about it, have an actual felt hammer hit something. Say a short length of taut nylong cord. Except you've got some of this material stretched over the hammer. You could build the whole mechanism as though it were a piano, but without the bulk of all that goes into the piano to actually make noise.
This should be a lot more responsive than keys that are merely velocity sensitive.
This is just like television, only you can see much further.
Cool! Now we can have pressure sensitive buttons that report how hard they're being pushed--real applications could be things like speed control of a motor by button pressure. More fun things would be devices that say "OW" when people push the button too hard or that randomize the required pressure to activate the button.
CEE5210S The signal SIGHUP was received.
Now employers can make employees wear uniforms made of this material so that employers can continuously monitor the actions of employees.
I'll see your senator, and I'll raise you two judges.
I would absolutely love a patch that would go on my shirt or the edge of my pillow that would let me turn on and off lights, dial phone numbers (speakerphone required, of course) browse the web, etc, all from the laziness of my own bed.
Ok, tech companies. You have demand, go make it so we can buy it.
WARNING: there is a trojan on your
Now only if someone could think of a humorous way to apply this to a "DON'T PANIC!" button.
Austin
why do i get the feeling that i'm going to, in the not so distant future, be reading about a product incorporating this material in the back of dirty magazines as the new alternative to phone sex?
"I hope I don't make a mistake and manage to remain a virgin." - Britney Spears
Actually, I think the more interesting use for materials like this is giving tactile feedback to robots. That would go a long way to make them able to pick up delicate items.
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Sometimes it's best to just let stupid people be stupid.
Think of this - make an entire NFL uniform out of small cells of this stuff, and a little box that transmits a map of the forces experienced by each cell over the surface of the uniform. Then you could superimpose a color-coded force map over the footage of the player wearing the uniform and see the forces experienced in, say, a receiver getting slammed by the safety in a slant over the middle.
Maybe this stuff could be used to improve protection for athletes, automobile drivers, jet-fighter pilots, and that Aussie Crocodile Hunter guy.
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The truth is out th- oh, wait, here it is...
"New Material Response to Touch Pressure". Yeah, it's called piezoelectric materials, and they were discovered during the time that Plato and those cool Romans were out sprinking their food with lead to get a buzz.
Piezoelectics are brittle, but more importantly they are displacement sensors with a range that extends sometimes up to a mm. They also yield high voltage low current signals.
The cloth described changes conductance with material strain. This allows a much broader range of sensitivity, and a much wider variety of uses. For example, why aren't piezoelectrics used in keyboards ?? The answer is cost. It costs to have high voltage circuitry, and the cost of just a few keys would be more than a current keyboards is worth.
The potential for consumer applications is enormous, ranging from sensing body position to interfaces like keyboards.
Piezoelectric materials are brittle and thus limited in how they can be used. This stuff is essentially metallic particles coated with a conductive polymer, and can be used in a variety of ways. Their claim to uniqueness is that no matter how high the metallic loading, conductive paths aren't formed. More info here.
- tactile sensors for remote operations of unmanned vehicles
- sensors for martial sports (fencing, karate, boxing ("oh my god, Mike Tyson just bit his opponent's ear with the force of a hyena!"))
- input devices for wearable computing (after you tap one spot with sufficient pressure, the rest of the keyboard on your pant legs activates).
- biomonitoring (adaptive gel shoe soles that register how hard you are jogging; chairs that provide support based on your seating preferences)
- intelligent furniture (it shouts/emits a high-pitched squeal whenever a pet is on it)
- Giant dance floors that trigger odd sound/lighting combos (anyone remember coley groups from Shockwave Rider
- Soldier/Policeman status monitoring (a layer of this placed inside their clothing/vests would alert whenever the wearer had been assaulted)
- Office cube walls that are input devices as well (embedded phones, temperature controls, etc)
Okay, that's the end of my two minutes of brainstorming.Information wants to be free
Information wants to be free
So what? Guns want to kill, but we have laws against that.
Freedom: "I won't!"
If it can differentiate between "the lightest touch" and "a hammer blow," perhaps it can be used for shopping-cart and telephone-pole collision detection, and autmatically signal a camera to take a picture, or light the flamethrower, or something.
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