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Giving Touch-Screen Buttons Depth and Height With Pneumatics

Posted by timothy on from the wait-for-pneumatic-spam dept.

blee37 writes "Researchers at Carnegie Mellon demonstrate 'popping out' touch screen buttons to become physical buttons using pneumatics. The idea is to combine the dynamic reconfigurability of touch screen buttons with the tactile feedback of real buttons. The technology could be applied where tactile feedback is currently lacking, such as in car navigation systems, ATMs, or cell phones."

4 of 146 comments (clear)

  1. Pricetag? Reliability? by courteaudotbiz · · Score: 3, Interesting

    And what would be the actual pricetag of such a device? I understand that we use more and more electronics to simplify the mechanics behind our devices. Now, with a pump, you need to physically inject air under the screen, so you have moving parts, and they are usually costly... besides, what would be the reliability of such a thing? and could you get a "flat" screen?

  2. Re:Why Not... by maxume · · Score: 2, Interesting

    The assembly of something with 15 buttons using the linked idea would probably be quite a lot cheaper than the assembly of 15 separate buttons, and the electronics to drive it would probably be simpler.

    --
    Nerd rage is the funniest rage.
  3. Re:ONE WORD: by foobsr · · Score: 4, Interesting

    "Nipples"

    Quote:"PhotoelasticTouch is a tabletop system designed to facilitate touch-based interaction with real objects made from transparent elastic material. The elastic material provides a realistic haptic interface, which when combined with the visual content displayed on the LCD tabletop, enables a coupling of the physical world and digital content. The system utilizes the photoelastic properties of transparent rubber to detect when a user pushes, pulls, or pinches the object, while the LCD provides appropriate visual feedback in accordance with the stress applied to the rubber."

    Well.

    CC.

    --
    TaijiQuan (Huang, 5 loosenings)
  4. Vat-grown octopus skin will make this obsolete. by jeffb+(2.718) · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Okay, maybe not octopus skin -- but in it, we have an existence proof for a surface that can display high-bandwidth color changes and slower, but quite elaborate, texture changes. With all the progress being made with microfluidics and chip-scale effectors, why on Earth would anyone pursue a chugging, hissing, thermodynamically-disadvantaged pneumatic system for this?