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Microsoft Patents Shape-Shifting Display

Posted by CmdrTaco on from the not-the-odo-kind dept.

Stoobalou writes "In layman's terms, Microsoft's patent is for a special type of touch-screen display which includes a 'shape-memory' layer at its base. When activated by a special frequency of ultraviolet light, individual blocks — not-coincidentally the same size as a pixel on the display part — can be raised or lowered, lending the displayed image physical texture."

16 of 112 comments (clear)

  1. decent touch screen keyboard? by DavMz · · Score: 2, Interesting

    The first application I see for this is a decent touch screen keyboard, if this shape-memory effect can be triggered fast enough. I'd feel much more comfortable typing on an tablet if there was some feedback to the typing.

    1. Re:decent touch screen keyboard? by Rosco+P.+Coltrane · · Score: 5, Interesting

      The first application I see is *finally* a decent braille screen for the blind. They can even dispense with the LCD screen altogether, to make the device affordable.

      --
      "A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
    2. Re:decent touch screen keyboard? by robot256 · · Score: 2, Interesting

      I'd heard that with the advent of voice synthesizers and computers, Braille was going out of favor. But if this works, it could be a better experience than a computer yapping at you while you surf the web, and make smartphones usable in quiet places.

    3. Re:decent touch screen keyboard? by arivanov · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Excellent idea if the pixels can be raised far enough and stay raised without whoever is touch-reading them getting skin cancer from the UV.

      I don't geddit...

      There are plenty of materials that will change their properties based on the basic electric field. This is the principle on which LCD's work. It should be possible to "stiffen" or "loosen" a display selectively without the UV bit just by adding a 4th "stiffness" pixel element similar to the 4th pixel element on Sharp displays. If that is too difficult, simulating different texture by vibrating through the use of a pieso-element in place of the fourth pixel is also an option. Tons of ways of doing this. Why UV?

      --
      Baker's Law: Misery no longer loves company. Nowadays it insists on it
      http://www.sigsegv.cx/
    4. Re:decent touch screen keyboard? by ByOhTek · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Having helped people using screen readers - a linear form of output, like speech, does NOT do an adequate job of relaying a 3-dimensional output (x,y,color). A braille display, and one with textures for various gui elements... seems nice to me.

      --
      Self proclaimed typo king, and inventor of the bear destroying coffee table (patent not pending).
    5. Re:decent touch screen keyboard? by Monkeedude1212 · · Score: 2, Insightful

      It specifically says "A special frequency of UV" - I imagine you can't really go quicker or slower than that value by much. It's not so much as "Why UV" as "Why THAT Frequency in particular".

      What you are asking is like, Why 'Visible light'? But the Article specifically says 'yellow'.

      I imagine that might help you solve the mysteries of how this device works. But I'm personally. not interested enough to look any further.

  2. Alternate use by Rosco+P.+Coltrane · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Sit on the display in a night club: the ambient black light projectors will turn it into a vibrating cushion.

    --
    "A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
  3. Re:Lemme guess.. by Amorymeltzer · · Score: 2, Funny

    While there's no sign of a product using Microsoft's patented technology on the horizon...

    It's a patent announcement, not a product announcement. You've technically seen every picture of every product making use of it.

    --
    I live in constant fear of the Coming of the Red Spiders.
  4. Re:Lemme guess.. by Yvan256 · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Didn't patents used to require at least a prototype?

    I bet someone has already patented terra-forming and dyson spheres.

  5. A Patent, you say? by LaminatorX · · Score: 4, Funny

    So wait, a major tech company filed a patent application for a new display technology that's genuinely novel and innovative?

    They still do that?

  6. Re:Lemme guess.. by Theaetetus · · Score: 4, Informative

    Didn't patents used to require at least a prototype?

    I bet someone has already patented terra-forming and dyson spheres.

    Not for the past hundred years or so. People realized that requiring prototypes made it impossible for small companies or individual inventors to get patents, particularly where the prototype alone might cost a million dollars to make. They also realized that if the description and figures were good enough, that one of ordinary skill in the art wouldn't need a physical prototype to envision the invention. And finally, they realized that a "prototype" of a small molecule or a genetically modified bacterium was kinda pointless, since no one was going to pick it up to look at anyway.

    Furthermore, so what if someone patents terra-forming and Dyson spheres? Are they going to be built within the next 20 years? No? So they'll be public domain and can never be patented, without further improvements on the earlier patent. And you're complaining that this is a bad thing?

  7. Re:Lemme guess.. by Yvan256 · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Copyrights used to have a fixed length too. If patents ever get their own Mickey Mouse, then it's going to be 25 years, then 50, etc.

  8. Re:Lemme guess.. by Theaetetus · · Score: 2, Informative

    Copyrights used to have a fixed length too. If patents ever get their own Mickey Mouse, then it's going to be 25 years, then 50, etc.

    Prove it. Patents have never been extended in the 220 years since the first Patent Act (other than the 3 year difference between filing date and issue date to comply with an international treaty). Unlike copyright, there is tremendous industry pressure against extending patents. Other companies want to use your new super-efficient power source... They couldn't care less about your new pop song.

  9. I Thought This Up by Doc+Ruby · · Score: 3, Informative

    I've been posting on Slashdot for years, and elsewhere before that, about layering a memory plastic grid on a touchscreen to raise bumps defining a dynamic textures and bounded areas for touch feedback.

    --

    --
    make install -not war

    1. Re:I Thought This Up by Bagels · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Today's XKCD strip seems appropriate here. Granted, there's no guarantee that Microsoft actually plans on implementing this ever...

      --
      --- Bwah?
  10. Re:Ahem. Pop Song? by Theaetetus · · Score: 2, Informative

    "Other companies want to use your new super-efficient power source... They couldn't care less about your new pop song."

    Your assumption that the most useful thing that may be copyrighted is a pop song is ridiculous. Other companies want to use source code, which is copyrighted not patented. Indeed, it is the GPL, which is a form of copyright known as copyleft, that allows us to have excellent software accessible to all for free.

    Actually, the release of the author's rights is what "allows us to have excellent software accessible to all for free." If copyleft did not exist, free software still could - see, e.g. any free software prior to 2007, v1 of the GPL.

    That said, copyright protects only that specific embodiment of the work. Other companies may want to use the source code to save time and expense of independent recreation, but if they do perform that independent recreation, they do not infringe copyright at all. That's why patent rights are stronger - they protect even against independent recreation.

    This still doesn't help the primary argument, which was that "zomg patent rights are going to be extended for hundreds of years," to which I say, FUD is not evidence. Provide some evidence to counter the evidence to the contrary over the past 220 years, or accept that your fears are unfounded.