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Buttons That Morph Out of Your Touchscreen
kkleiner writes "Wouldn't it be awesome if our tablets and smartphones could have buttons that morphed out of the touchscreen, and then went away again when we didn't need them? It sounds like magic, but now it is reality. Created by Tactus Technology, a Fremont, California-based start-up, Tactus is a deformable layer that sits on top of a touchscreen sensor and display. 'The layer is about 0.75mm to 1mm thick, and at its top sits a deformable, clear layer 200 nm thick. Beneath the clear layer a fluid travels through micro-channels and is pushed up through tiny holes, deforming the clear layer to create buttons or shapes. The buttons or patterns remain for however long they are needed, just for a few seconds or for hours when you’re using your iPad to write that novel. And because the fluid is trapped inside the buttons, they can remain for however long without additional power consumption. They come or go pretty quickly, taking only a second to form or disappear.'"
Assuming that it could also be used to display Braille, rhis tech could probably be rather useful for tablet computers and ebook readers for the blind.
... unless they can come up with a way to raise them based on a fine grid array rather than fixed cell sizes. Then it would be a truly useful technology.
Until then, I am sure a company or two will see this useful for raising a telephone keypad above the rest of the display, for example. I don't see it as more finely-controlled than that, because the screens of different devices differ so much.
Unless it were made into a grid array, it could never be a standard. For long.