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A Touch Screen With Morphing Buttons
Al writes "Researchers at Carnegie Mellon University have created a touch screen that can also produce physical buttons. Graduate student Chris Harrison and professor Scott Hudson use a projector and infrared sensor below the screen to illuminate it and make it touch-sensitive, and the physical buttons are created using air pumps below the surface. They say this type of screen could be particularly useful when a simple, flat touch-screen is too distracting, for example in a vehicle dashboard."
3..2..1..
I hate the lack of tactile feedback on touchscreens. If this really solves that problem I'd love to see it used in ATMs and self checkouts.
You are using English. Please learn the difference between loose and lose; they're, there, and their; your and you're.
If you read the article this isn't nearly as impressive as it sounds. The buttons are in a static configuration and need an air compressor to rise. They're going to need to come up with a more flexible method of tactile feedback if they want to create a useful technology. Back to the drawing board!
I can say [REDACTED] anytime I want!
Of course. You can't just use a simple flat touchscreen in a vehicle dashboard. It would be impossible for a blind person to find the controls.
I'm getting a lot of other people's accounts - including their private, unpublished emails and mod points.
WTF?
In about five years I'm going to come up with this great idea to actually use physical "buttons" to control things. Everyone will be clamoring to use my "pushbutton" technology to replace the ubiquitous touchscreens that everyone has come to despise so much.
They say this type of screen could be particularly useful when a simple, flat touch-screen is too distracting, for example in a vehicle dashboard.
I know we are obsessed with multitasking more and more, but no. Almost every automobile "accident" is caused by one or more people simply not paying attention, and I don't think we need to give them even more stuff to play with while driving.
If a touch screen is going to be too distracting for some situation, then mighty morphin power buttons are not the answer. The answer is wait until you are done with whatever you are doing, then use them.
Well actually not I, but Apple have - see this patent filing story
In fact, they mention using air as the actuator, as far back as 2007.
Physicists get Hadrons!
Logging out, then logging back in seems to have helped me (at least for now).
End anonymous moderation and posting on
http://www.mydigitallife.info/2007/11/07/nokia-introduces-haptikos-touch-feedback-technology/
The technology in this article isn't scalable, and the "touch screen" isn't transparent, it just has stuff projected onto it from below. The Nokia solution involves piezo sensor pads under the screen and engineered in a 0.1mm movement in the screen itself.
Not that I will ever purchase a phone that doesn't have actual physical buttons on it for when (not if, WHEN) the touchscreen breaks down. I'm just saying.
It's just a proof of concept, ok.
But the concept itself suffers a major limitation: any pressurized, pneumatic-based approach will consume too much power to be eligible for a portable device - where battery life is usually key.
Not coming to your iPhone anytinme soon.
"Whenever people agree with me I always feel I must be wrong." (Oscar Wilde)
First question I have though is what kind of a tactile feedback is possible? Would this eventually make a keyboard that I'd want to use for hours at a time?
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
The theme song is in my head... what's worse, it's the WRONG song! It's actually the theme music to the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles!
"Mighty Morphin' Power Buttons! Mighty Morphin' Power Buttons! Heros with a bash shell!"
Here's a patent application that does something similar (and arguably more usefull). It can be attached to many touch screens and uses the output luminance of the screen itself to produce the tactile feedback using a specialized fluid.
http://www.google.com/patents?id=EtWPAAAAEBAJ/
This is the kind of tech I though RIM would research before jumping the touchy-feelie screen bandwagon. But noooooo, they'd rather the Blackberry be an iPhone me-too...
I'm not going to repeat the many comments criticizing this but I've actually expected this as the next development for some time. Mainly from the standpoint from my iPhone. I can't actually feel where the "5" key is on the phone, where as most other phones, you can feel the bump. It would be easier to dial so I wouldn't have to look down at the screen.
We don't live in Shouldland.
That keypad looks like it came straight out of the Back to the Future DeLorean =)
The ideal interface for the car is a mixture of buttons, touchscreen, and voice. Buttons for selecting the device to control down the side, more buttons for the major device modes down the bottom, gigantic touchscreen landing areas for controlling the major subfunctions. (Optional) voice recognition could be (again, optionally) modal as well to minimize the potential for erroneous recognition. The biggest problem people usually make with the interface is to put too much shit on it at once. This means the user is occasionally having to read small text on a screen, which just doesn't work while driving.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Am I the only one who read about these buttons and immediately imagined a full-screen braille reader for visually impaired users?
It will probably be some silicon like material that will shrink or expand with more or less current. Either that or a layer of air/water between two surfaces, where the bottom surface can attract or repel the top one. Both would be preferable, so you could have check boxes or something like that dip and navigation buttons stick out.
The trick will be making it taut enough to feel right, or just training people not to mash down on the buttons like monkeys.
Actually, I'm sure that many people can say they've come up with something like this. What's cool is that these people are commercializing it. My project idea involved putting small B/W LCD displays inside an array of physical push-buttons. Along with another larger fixed display, we had a fairly flexible device whose buttons could mean anything.
I just took a drive from Kelseyville, CA to Santa Cruz, CA (and back a couple days later) and on the way down my lady and I were treated to many spectacular feats of shitty driving. We laughed about it the whole way because every bad driver was a member of a class stereotyped as being unable to drive. First and foremost, the worst drivers were Prius Owners who otherwise did not seem to share any particular characteristics; they were split about evenly gender-wise, and were generally racially representative of the 101 corridor. The second-most prevalent group of bad drivers were women, followed by Asians and then Mexicans. The Mexicans may have been induced to drive worse because of the bizarre sight of two (and only two) white people in a Chevy Astro on the 101.
Obviously, some of those Prius drivers have mod points.
Anyway, there is one problem with your analysis: hippies can't afford a Prius, only yippies and dippies. And by dippies, I mean the people too stupid to crank the numbers on the energy consumption of the production of the vehicle and its fuel and compare them to the numbers on buying a Golf TDI, which runs on more energy-efficient fuel (and even biofuels from waste if you look around) and gets better mileage... and isn't full of batteries.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
This is one of those "amazing advances" that just isn't either.
I'm sorry for the guy dumping all the effort into this, and maybe its just me, but I have 3 dozen of these ideas a day, I spend a fleeting 15 seconds thinking about implementation, and dismiss each for the types of reasons that are already mentioned here (to which I'll add a couple of my own).
clunky- thicker and less elegant than a glass display
non-durable, repeated use and puncture vulnerable
fixed layout, defeats the purpose of touch-screens
visual bumps, not really tactile buttons
just a rewrap of projector technology
use of projector/cameras cannot be made flat
power consumption and noise
Seriously... Look, if you're so sold on solving this "problem" then do it right: Use a variation of existing braile text displays made with translucent plastic and use tri-color LED as the display technology with force-feedback sensors on each 'bank' of pips. The term 'expensive' comes to mind, but 10x the quality solution as this crap.
Many years ago I tried to design a machine that would display text on a Braille readout, one line at a time. I figured it would be possible to use tiny solenoids to raise and lower the dots, but I didn't (and still don't) have the engineering expertise to build such a thing. Seems like this technology ought to be able to do it.
I think Alpine had this technology in their car stereos. Check it out. http://www.crutchfield.com/S-sTHC7HVqUZ9/app/learn/article/default.aspx?pp=T&page=All&aid=639&articlegroupid=76 I never owned one of these, and am not really sure how it works, but supposedly you can feel the buttons that you press.
Wondering how pop resistant it is :>
Speaking about popping, this is THE INTERFACE for:
http://www.cocagames.com/games/files/bubblewrap.swf
It turns to ashes in your mouth.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1214855&cid=27752751
http://tech.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1214827&cid=27931263
Eat your words now (you like apples? How do you like THEM apples, asswipe)... lol!
APK