Slashdot Mirror
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
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.
I am Slashdot. Are you Slashdot as well?
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.
Trust the Computer. The Computer is your friend.
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.
... 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?
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.
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