Tactus Technology (Morphing 3D Touchscreen Buttons)

[Dae314]

Link to Tactus Technology website.

Who else has seen this? This is the single most awesome thing I have seen this month. As far as I understand from the whitepaper, the Tactus interface is targeted at touchscreen/phone/tablet/etc manufacturers to add the ability to make "buttons" appear and disappear dynamically on a touchscreen.

You can read more in the whitepaper available on the site, but the basic idea is that there's a Tactus layer on a touchscreen that controls pressure under certain areas which have very small holes punched in them. When the pressure increases, the flexible top layer of the Tactus layer bulges out creating a "button". When the pressure is released, the top layer settles back down and the "button" disappears. It's really hard to explain what this looks like so watch the videos on the site to get a better picture.

I don't believe this is a consumer add-on product since it requires integration with a device's touch system, and the "dynamic button placement" has to be set at manufacturing time.

Still, I'm excited to see this come out on tablets/phones. They're supposedly ready for release some time this year too . Are you excited for this? Do you think it'll revolutionize touchscreens? Or do you think it's just another gimmick bound for failure within a year?

[† Emotional Outlet]

That's some science fiction stuff, haha. I still like having a physical keyboard for my phone, so it doesn't appeal to me specifically, but I think I'm in the minority when it comes to not enjoying touch screen technology. That is pretty cool, though. If they could integrate that kind of thing seamlessly and work with a lot of different apps, that'd be neat.

 

I like the comment on this video.

 

Now if you were to make haptic gloves once this micro-fluidics trick speeds up a little... That'd be bawss. Feeling a full keyboard in virtual space. Type in the air or on any flat surface, and still get some force feedback.

 

If you couple these haptic gloves with a VRD (like Google Glass) then input and output are taken care of. You can then do computing while frolicking on a meadow, with the brain of the device (smartphone/laptop) stashed away in your pocket or backpack.

[Dark_Angel13]

Woah, this is pretty damn awesome, I want it on my next phone!