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First Touch-Screen, Bendable E-Paper Developed
Al writes "The first touch-screen flexible e-paper has been developed by a team from Arizona State University and E-Ink (the company that makes the technology for Amazon's Kindle and Sony's Reader). Jann Kaminski and colleagues at ASU's Flexible Display Center say the main challenge is that most touch-screen technologies do not respond well to being flexed. So they used an inductive screen, which relies on a magnetized styluses to induce a field in a sensing layer at the back of the display. The first adopters for the technology are likely to be the US Army. Watch a video of the device being tested."
But what purpose does it serve exactly, that isn't served by other devices? It sounds like yet another invention whose daughter is necessity.
Tic-Tac-Toe, Global Thermonuclear War, and relationships all have the same winning move.
notice how a row and column goes dead after the flexibility demonstration.
Still very neat demo of the first stage prototype.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
Will it blend?
Take the cheese to sickbay, the doctor should see it as soon as possible - B'Elanna Torres, "Learning Curve"
Bendable e-paper! I look forward to the day when the stack of textbooks and file folders I keep can be easily replaced by one or two screens and a million tiny hard drives I can lose.
Although, it would be nice if a subscription to a newspaper meant that they would give me their proprietary e-paper and update it once a day with the new issue, keeping all previous issues on file and searchable on the same piece of hardware.
I'm not impressed. I can do this with my current LCD Screen. Watch thi*#&$&#*((*#
640YB ought to be enough for anybody.
you could have a screen with a larger surface area of the device itself. Think of a scroll, two stiff wooden pieces with a flexible piece of paper in the middle. You could theoretically make a tiny device with the e-paper rolled into one end and your rigid components in another (or some similar setup).
This signature is pure win!
There is a growing perception that touch means touch - using your finger. Using an inert stylus (like Windows Mobile devices) is a very poor second. But having to use a special purpose magnetic stylus is a FAIL.
Engineering is the art of compromise.
e-ink displays have no back lights. That thing in the back was likely the magnetic sensor.
E-ink is poised to be a very versatile display.
They now have a low-power, easily readable display that can be interactive and placed anywhere.
How about a "rolled" e-reader. Capable of taking up much less space than a standard book reader?
How about a foldaway display that can function on a number of devices?
Looking with a more futuristic bend, couldn't a flexible, interactive, low-power, non-backlit display be used to adapt common items to interactive displays?
The back of an airline seat? Now a menu with options!
If "flexible" displays are so useless, why are they a main goal of almost every display manufacturer?
And since when is adding "touchscreen" capabilities to a device a non-important function.
PlasticLogic (http://www.plasticlogic.com/product.html) is made of bendable eInk and has a touchscreen. I got to mess around with a prototype of this device at O'Reilly's TOC conference in February. When I asked why the device itself was not flexible, they said that in consumer testing, they found that people didn't like the flexibility because it made the device seem more fragile than it really is. The touchscreen was pretty cool--they use it to have an iPhone-like soft keyboard, which means you can have a much bigger display area, as you don't have to find somewhere to put all those keys, like on the Kindle.
I'm having the idea of a scroll which you can unroll, it would act like an e-book reader/newspaper/phone whatever and with the touch screen part this sounds alot like the stuff they had in The Red planet(2000) movie!
guard 1: hmm, that must be a powerpoint presentation
guard 2: ITS A ROCKET LAUNCHER!! NOO!!!
Go go Gadget Nailgun!
Will this new technology make the iRex Iliad more affordable?
http://www.irextechnologies.com/products/iliad
Currently this cool reader is basically eInk over a Wacom tablet, and costs >$7C
I still want one, though.
More music, fewer hits
That makes me imagine playing wylie coyote tricks on my girl friend ... Where did the door go? its over here ... THWACK!
Go go Gadget Nailgun!
As soon as it's cheap enough to publish millions of books on, wallpaper my walls, and stretch over every orifice of my body, let me know.
Now we just need color too :-)
I, for one, think that this technology is bad ass.
I don't get it, some people act like they're jealous they didn't come up with it or something? lol
In the ancient world, books were scrolls, which avoided the complexity and expense of bookbinding. With flexible e-paper, I suspect the scroll will return to its rightful place as the preferred format for printed matter, since you'll only need one large scroll to display anything every printed.
Only mine had one other cool feature...You could lift the plastic cover to erase. Here's a link to a pic... http://www.schylling.com/Creative-Play/MGSL-2.jpg
So if they made a little finger-glove that just goes over the tip of your finger that's magnetic, or even if they eventually develop something that's basically a magnetic version of a false fingernail, would you not consider THAT touch screen? For your definition, does it HAVE to require actual skin-to-screen contact?
For my money, I'd rather NOT directly touch and smear up a screen. You'll have a sharper, more accurate touching point using anything other than the rounded, soft surface of a fingertip as well.
And finally, if something can sense a finger touching it, odds are it'll be set off by just about anything touching it. If they can make it so that it's ONLY activated by the previously mentioned fingertip cover, I'd consider that WAY better.
Planet Zebeth - Metroid with a twist
I know I'm not the only nerd infuriated by Styluses. Styli anyone?
All battles happen at the junction of four map segments, at night, in the rain. This solves the first problem. Hopefully it's illuminated and waterproof.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
1. A new application for this would be advertising.. + Many creative advertising adventures can be accomplished by a flexible display. This is a good thing because that's where all the money is. Everyone advertises and pays money for it.(EVERYONE) + Great reduction in weight of the hardware. (Watch football on a 20" screen in your car. (Side effects may include death) - prolly too expensive right now - will see it overused on cnn soon
Slashdot - I went there to fix their grammar that they're so bad at.
Yeah paper's great...until the information changes. As the article points out, the Army is looking for a more rugged, easily portable display. When I was a Field Artillery Surveyor, we used a Forward Entry Device, or FEDs. The thing was about as portable as an Oxford New English Dictionary and came with its own carrying case (another thing to strap over your shoulder and lug around, along with your body armor, protective mask, and rifle, and pack in 120 degree heat). To be able to put all of this into little more than an armband like a quarterback's play sheet? Yeah, screw paper.
-=Bang Bang=-
I could see this type of technology being really useful in QB wrist guards that list the various plays. All a coach would need to do is send a wifi signal to the QB's wrist gaurd and the play would automatically be called up. In a similar fashion, it makes sense why the Army would be the first adopters.
An inventor is a man who asks 'Why?' of the universe and lets nothing stand between the answer and his mind.
Correct. Not having a back light is actually a good thing for military uses. I work a few offices down from some of the guys on this project and talk to them occasionally. At one point, one of them suggested adding a back light to it for night operations to an army guy, and he was firmly against it to avoid any light that might give the position away to an enemy. When asked how the user would use it at night, the response was something along the lines of "That's why I carry night vision goggles around."
When asked how the user would use it at night, the response was something along the lines of "That's why I carry night vision goggles around."
Absolutely. And even if there isn't enough ambient light to make the NVGs work, you STILL don't want a typical backlight.
In that case what you do is throw a poncho over your head, put your NVGs on and use IR light. The poncho is obviously a precaution against enemies with NVGs seeing your IR light, but you use IR light both because it doesn't reflect as much and because *only* enemies with NVGs can see it. If for some reason you don't have an IR light (maybe you don't have NVGs with their built-in IR light and are making do with the starlight scope from your rifle), then you use a flashlight with a red filter on it, which reduces reflected glow.
Smart soldiers are very much "belt and suspenders" types. They take every edge they can get.
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To me that's a much more serious limitation of the current displays than the inability to bend them.
... the display touches itself?
8==8 Bones 8==8
The hideously slow refresh rate and the dreaded screen "reset" need to be fixed before epaper screens will be viable for anything but static content. It's nice to have some kind of interactivity and perhaps a touch screen could have limited uses such as simple note taking, or soft buttons. But as the video demonstrates, it would be intolerable for much more until epaper fixes its underlying issue.
I hear they're designing a new Fusion reactor using e-paper. Apparently this should be finished in about 10 years!!!
God was my co-pilot, but then we crashed and I was forced to eat him.
The primary sucky point with a stylus is that they are easy to lose. You can generally find an easy back up for a passive stylus by using a retracted ball point pen or the back of a pencil or such. A magnetic stylus is a specialized item.
Engineering is the art of compromise.