A sticky touch screen lets you feel the buttons
May 11, 2011
T-Pad (Tactile Pattern Display) (credit: Vincent Lévesque, et al.)
A touch screen that lets you feel virtual buttons has been developed by researchers at the University of British Columbia, the University of Canterbury, and Northwestern University.
The T-Pad (Tactile Pattern Display) uses vibration to create variable friction areas on a touch screen so that your finger “feels” a physical structure.
As you pass your finger across the surface it slips and sticks as it encounters the different areas. This gives the physical sensation that there are real buttons or other widgets “engraved” on the touch screens.
(Credit: Vincent Lévesque, et al.)
The vibration is applied directly to the glass and provides a layer of air between your finger and the screen which reduces the friction. The system tracks finger position and turns the vibration on and off.
A prototype was demonstrated recently at the ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems in Vancouver, B.C.
Ref: Vincent Lévesque, Louise Oram, Karon MacLean, Andy Cockburn, Nicholas D. Marchuk, Dan Johnson, J. Edward Colgate, Michael A. Peshkin, Enhancing Physicality in Touch Interaction with Programmable Friction, CHI 2011