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Researchers Create Mid-Air Haptic Feedback System For Touch Displays
Bismillah writes "University of Bristol researchers have come up with a way to make touch screens more touchy-feely so to speak, using ultrasound waves to produce haptic feedback. You don't need to touch the screen even, as the UltraHaptics waves can be felt mid-air. Very Minority Report, but cooler."
The researchers built an ultrasonic transducer grid behind an acoustically transparent display. Using acoustic modeling of a volume above the screen, they can create multiple movable control points with varying properties. A Leap Motion controller was used to detect the hand movements.
Is this the future of porn?
Required reading for internet skeptics
Systems like this, and that super-creepy "modulated ultrasound" stuff, make me glad that I'm not stuck on the IRB that has to shoot down all the neat delusion-disorder related research that would be totally unethical to do with hardware like this...
James Tilly Matthews would be proud!
This sounds great for blind people. It even works for deaf people too, and can be designed very similar to existing 2d UIs, so there is little difficulty porting UIs to support it. The whole 3D support it just an extra bonus.
A Theremin is a box with an antenna. You wave your hands and make "space sounds" - the music you heard in all those 1950s science-fiction movies. Ever play one? They are effin' difficult, because you're just waving your hands in the air using your muscle memory as reference points for tones only. Anyone who is good at playing a Theremin is a musical instrument genius.
Um .. did you even watch the video?? They are using phased ultrasonics to create tactile points in space - no muscle memory needed.
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On-screen keyboards will finally get tactile feedback.
Creating feedback points in space is cool of course, and will have a lot of uses. But I suspect the highest impact will be when applying a simpler version to ordinary 2D touch screens, and only at the screen surface.
We could finally have screen keyboards and games where you can find the buttons with your fingers, and where they actually give tactile feedback as you press them. Might be able to define surface textures for elements on screen, again making it much easier to use your phone or tablet without having to look at the screen at all times.
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Well, in minority report, you had an hologram in mid air. It's pretty neat because now a 3d projection would have tactile feedback, which I suppose is really the point of such a system.
The "Minority Report" airborne desktop may seem the coolest future use, but it is only one potential future. The potential benefit to consumers may be biggest on new control devices that reduce or eliminate hazards of burning, electrocution, scalding, etc. caused previously by direct handling of items by clumsier, manual means. To me this risk reduction capability is far more likely, and far more beneficial, than what was seen on Minority Report.
I deny that I have not avoided attaining the opposite of that which I do not want.
When I read
ultrasonic transducer grid
, my first thought was that it was a doomsday weapon created by Doctor Drakken.
Often the only difference between natural and human-created types of radiation is that the artificial stuff is modulated to achieve a particular behaviour or characteristic amidst the din of natural "noise". So, addressing your comment: assuming that animals will also hate a future full of all the pre-existing, natural sources of IR, ultrasound, magnetics, light, and other frequencies that already may be doing them harm, there won't be much difference.
I deny that I have not avoided attaining the opposite of that which I do not want.
... to use frequencies over a few hundred kilohertz, to spare the bats, bugs, and dogs. Couldn't find that in the article.
We're talking sound pressure levels high enough that you can feel the modulation with your fingers. Is this safe?
And how much power does it take to make pressure that's useful for tactile feedback at a distance?
This would be awesome with a [not-yet-possible] video hologram. Imagine a hologram you can touch; very sci-fi.
The speed of sound is relative to the density of the media it is traversing. All Ultrasonic transmit beamforming algorithms must take media density into consideration to achieve reasonable convergence. Unless this device is performing adaptive beamforming or has a very precise humidity sensor its functionality will be spotty at best, and even if it does the inventors just stepped into a shiatstorm of patents held by the companies that have been forming medical imaging IP warchests over the past 15 - 20 years. Good luck and godspeed.
Yeah but you don't need muscle memory to find the control points as that IS the point of haptic feedback. You FEEL where the control points are which means it is also a display that you can feel which makes it good for those who can't see.
Exactly how much sensation can this thing generate? Is it possible that this technology may eventually be adapted into a type of 'force field'?
Animals are really going to hate the future with us 'polluting' the world with non-natural sources...
Why would they automatically 'hate' it? I've seen lots of dogs who LOVE non-natural Frisbees, cats who LOVE non-natural LASER spots.
I can't wait to see the first "cute kitty" YouTube video of a cat playing with the tactile feedback in mid-air.
Some sort of low precision kinect alternative?
... did anyone else just nerdgasm? I mean, I know, given the way we interface with any electronics these days, it's going to be difficult to find applications for this stuff, at least initially. But, with technology like this, I doubt it will us long to find some use for it so that, in 20 years, we'll wonder how we did without it.
Kudos to the university of Bristol for developing such an exciting and original idea.
You know, there is a difference between trolling and pointing out the flaws in your reasoning. Just saying.
Pretty cool, where's my brain interface? I want to move less than with a mouse. Waving my hands or arms about is going the wrong way.
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
A lot of humans already suffer from these ear-rapping subwoofers that can be heard from miles away.
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You can't see it, and I get the feeling the testers kind of knew where it was. I'm serious when I say this is missing holograms. :/
But still a nice step.
And the main advantage over a physical interface is that it can be configured on the fly.
I hear they're naming it the Focused Ultrasound Coronal Kinetics-Enabled Display.
Sounds like a winner.
I know I'm showing my age here, but I can't see the term "sonic transducer" with out a Rocky Horror Picture Show flashback: This sonic transducer, it is I suppose some kind of audio-vibratory-physio-molecular transport device?
I don't see things in black and white; I see the gray. Heck, I actually see in color, which makes things more difficult
If it will hurt my beloved pet ears then no thanks.