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Textured Tactile Touchscreens
HizookRobotics writes "A new covering developed by Senseg and Toshiba Information Systems gives touchpads, LCDs, and other curved surfaces (eg. cellphones) programmable texture using a high-resolution electrotactile array — a grid of electrodes that excite nerves in the skin with small pulses of current to trick the body into perceiving texture, pressure, or pin-pricks depending on the current amplitude and electrode resolution. The new covering has many potential applications: interactive gaming, touchscreens with texture, robot interfaces, etc."
...to say that I'm looking forward to condoms and/or sex toys using this marvelous innovation!
'The Economy' is a giant Ponzi scheme whose most pitiable suckers are the youngest among us and the yet-unborn.
Reminds me of the Star Trek Voyager episode Year Of Hell, where at one point a blinded tactical officer takes his station and activates some form of tactile interface.
It sounds like this could be used for a braille interface, I wonder if a braille interface that can change on the fly would ultimately be beneficial or prove confusing though...
I think that's actually one of the main uses you'll see as the technology rolls out. I've worked on designing a few methods of large scale (as in life-sized) multi-touch alpha-numeric input and the biggest issue I experience at the moment is ergonomics, not haptic feedback. It's really hard to have a screen positioned in a way that makes it easy to view content and easy to type on at the same time. The texture will help but until better form factors are developed we're not going to get any really decent soft QWERTY keyboards (input conventions themselves are a different story.)
I don't know how many years on this Earth I got left. I'm going to get real weird with it. - Frank Reynolds
Nope, believe it or not, it has everything to do with the way my nerves interpret the texture. I have no pain, at all, otherwise with my finger/wrist. Simply playing with netbooks that use those bumpy touchpads showed me that I don't like the sensation. Again, I might be in a minority, even the only person alive that gets that sensation, but ya..
The biggest disadvantage of touchscreen virtual keyboards for me is that I have to look at them. On physical keys I can go by feel and muscle-memory lets me go much faster. Sounds like this could bridge that gap.
Maybe I'm in a minority, but I already feel an odd sensation of "pain" when I use that odd textured (array of bumps?) on some netbook touchpads
I used to get a really weird sensation from those bumps too -- not pain as such, but quite unpleasant. After a couple of weeks of daily use I seem to have become numb to it though... It would be interesting to know where that feeling comes from.
I mod down anyone who says "I will be modded down for this", regardless of the rest of their comment
Rated as funny, but not really...
My Macbook used to constantly give me small shocks around the edges/bumps on the wrist rest.
I was travelling in some dubious parts of the world, with crummy ungrounded power, and a US-spec 12--240v power supply.
The edges and bumps had more wear from use, and the wear and scratches would let the charge pass thru when there was a voltage float from the lack of grounding.
Seriously annoying. I thought the pain was from a seam in the notebook case flexing and pulling small arm hairs until I actually saw faint sparks in the dark one evening.
So, yeah, badly grounded is actually a plausible explanation.
I don't want little zaps simulating texture. What I want is an electrically activated memory plastic screen that pops up (and releases down) little bumps under software control where the lines drawn on the GUI appear on the screen. Some raised textures on buttons and other GUI widgets. So I can feel where I'm touching, just as I can see where the widgets are. The hard part is making it all transparent, but that's it.
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make install -not war