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Tactus Tactile Layer Generates A Haptic User Interface
Tactus Technology has created a Tactile Layer display component for smartphones that generates a haptic interface with physical buttons or other shapes which rise right out of the surface of the touchscreen.
(Tactus Tactile Layer generates a smartphone haptic keyboard)
Tactus uses microfluidic technology to create physical buttons that rise from the touchscreen to give users the experience or feeling of operating a physical keyboard. When no longer needed, the buttons recede back into the touchscreen, leaving no trace of their presence.The Tactile Layer panel is a completely flat, transparent, dynamic surface that adds no extra thickness to the standard touchscreen display since it replaces a layer of the already existing display stack.
When triggered, the thin layer deforms and buttons or shapes of a specific height, size and firmness appear on the surface of the screen.
SF writers have thought about the idea of adding tactile capabilities to devices that ordinarily do not have them. Frederik Pohl's Joymaker device has a tactile net capability.
The most recent version of Battlestar Galactica featured a Cylon datastream terminal with tactile qualities that was more flexible than the Tactus design.
(Cylon datastream 'terminal')
Via TG Daily.
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