haptic

Weather forecast icons can be cryptic. There's only so much that can be communicated by a picture of a gray but-not-too-gray cloud with some raindrops and a sun poking out behind it.

All you really want to know is, "Am I going to freeze my nuts off out there?"

Enter the Cryoscope, an invention that allows you to feel the temperature of tomorrow's forecasted air.

Created by Robb Godshaw, an industrial design student at Rochester Institute of Technology, the Cryoscope uses an aluminum cube to house a heat sink, a thermoelectric-cooling Peltier element, and a cooling fan, all operated by an Arduino controller that receives forecast data from a Web-based app. … Read more

If you've been avoiding all touch-screen devices because you love the feel of physical buttons, a new kind of tactile screen may have you singing a different tune.

Researchers at the Swiss Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne (EPFL) have come up with next-generation haptic technology that creates the feeling of pressing actual buttons on a touch screen.

"We're adding the sense of touch to tactile surfaces," said Christophe Winter, a Ph.D. student at EPFL's Integrated Actuators Laboratory (LAI) who is writing his thesis on the subject. "The term 'touch screen' that's used to describe current technology is really a misnomer, because they only provide visual and auditory feedback."

To achieve this, the scientists at the LAI used a piezoelectric material that vibrates when voltage is applied to it. The vibrations are undetected by human touch, but they create a thin layer of air between the touch screen and a user's finger to give the feeling of a raised surface. … Read more

We've gotten used to touch screens always being flat. Get ready for that to change.

Silicon Valley start-up Tactus Technology has designed a touch screen that grows 3D buttons and knobs where and when you want them.

Smartphones, tablets, game consoles, and kiosks equipped with the technology would sprout physical controls like QWERTY keyboards and knobs on demand. The controls would recede into the touch screen surface after they've served their purpose.

3D controls are often easier to maneuver than today's flat touch-screen controls, as you can use them without looking. Getting the best of both worlds means marrying physical controls' higher accuracy and ease of use with touch screens' elegance, simplicity, and dynamic nature. The physical cues are especially important for people who can't see well or who have trouble with fine hand movements. They also make it easier to control your cell phone when it's in your pocket.

The trick to making a morphing touch screen useful is fitting it in a smartphone. The Tactus design calls for sandwiching a fluid between touch-screen layers and pushing the fluid around with a series of tiny valves. The top layer is flexible, so pushing the fluid to one part of the screen raises the surface there. … Read more

There's been plenty of buzz for the high-concept Toshiba Libretto W105 since it was first announced in June of 2010. This dual-touch-screen minilaptop is a limited-release showpiece designed by Toshiba to celebrate the company's 25th anniversary in the mobile computing business, and is certainly an experiment that pushes the boundaries between laptops, tablets, and portable media players.

Despite the far-out thinking behind it, and the underpowered components, the Libretto W105 worked in practice far better than we expected in some areas, including certain kinds of media playback and general Web surfing. That was especially surprising, as the system is running Windows 7 Home Premium over two simultaneous displays, all from a 1.2GHz Intel Pentium U5400 CPU and 2GB of RAM. Our configuration (the only one currently available, according to Toshiba's Web site) is called the W105-L251 and sells for $1,099.

Looking a little like an oversize Nintendo DS, the libretto has two 7-inch multitouch displays, with the second taking the place of the traditional keyboard one would expect to find in this kind of clamshell design. By tapping a button on the side of the chassis, a virtual keyboard (similar to what you'd find on an iPhone or iPad) pops up to fill the bottom screen. Tap the same button twice and you get a virtual onscreen touch pad instead.

Our first struggle came with figuring out how to juggle these two virtual input devices, as the bottom screen isn't large enough to display both the keyboard and the touch pad fully at once (and, in our tests, the onscreen keyboard and touch pad couldn't register inputs simultaneously). Eventually, we got into a nice rhythm of single- and double-tapping to switch from keyboard to touch pad on the fly, although it's a little counterintuitive.

Pressing the button on the right side of the bottom display switches between the standard Windows OS desktop and a series of Toshiba's proprietary Bulletin Board screens, which allow you to arrange photos and notes on a touch-friendly surface. It looks snazzy, but we can't say it's particularly useful, especially as it (like almost any proprietary app) has its own learning curve.

Actually navigating around the Windows interface was mostly lag-free, which is something even many Netbooks can't say. At the same time, a 7-inch touch screen, no matter how many navigational tricks you include, simply isn't optimal for touch, and we spent plenty of time hunting and pecking, trying to center the tiny cursor on buttons and tabs. … Read more

Most onscreen keyboards, like those in the iPhone or other smartphones, have no tactile feedback, so you need to look at the screen and the virtual keyboard to make sure of the correct input. However, this might soon change, thanks to haptic technology, a mechanism that allows the screen to "touch" you back.

One of the major developers of this technology, the Immersion Corporation, announced Tuesday a new product that powers touch-feedback effects in touch-screen computers, the TouchSense 2500. The company claims that this product enables drop-in integrated circuit solutions to drive haptic effects that bring the user … Read more

Vibrating game controllers are so yesteryear. Researchers at Tokyo Metropolitan University have decided it's time to add another element to gaming--heat.

Using a pair of thermoelectric surfaces at the sides of the controller, gamers will feel their palms heat up or cool down based on the on-screen scenario. Your character standing near a flame? Feel the burn!

Fortunately, the difference in temperature in the ThermoGame system is less than 10 degrees, so you can leave the bandages in the first-aid kit when you're fighting an intense virtual battle. University researchers are collaborating with the National Institute of Special … Read more

Sure, it's great when that hot avatar gives you a hug in Second Life, but wouldn't it be even better if you could actually feel the embrace? Researchers from Japan are demonstrating a motorized haptic device that lets you experience real-time virtual hugs by physically reproducing the pressure felt on the chest and back when someone gives you a squeeze.

Getting a hug that moves beyond the basic emoticon requires donning a kind of harness adorned with soft fabric hands that envelop the wearer in a warm faux embrace. But the HaptiHug is only one of the affective garments included in the I_FeelIM ("I feel therefore I am") system, which uses software to extract emotional meaning from written text and pass it on to one of a number of haptic devices that react accordingly.

The speaker-enabled HaptiHeart, for example, emits palpable heartbeat-like patterns to evoke sadness, anger, and fear. The vibrating HaptiButterfly and HaptiTickler, worn around the abdomen, are supposed to create feelings akin to nervous, joyous belly flutters. And the HaptiShiver and HaptiTemper are aimed at boosting fear emotions by, respectively, sending shivers up and down the wearer's spine by way of vibrating motors and producing spine chills via a fan blowing cool air. … Read more

Most of us are familiar with haptics on touch-screen phones. The feedback technology uses vibrating pulses to replace the tactility of, for example, pressing a physical button. At the recent computer graphics event Siggraph Asia 2009, a team of researchers from Japan's University of Tsukuba demonstrated what they can do with haptics by letting users "feel" a remote object.

The prototype system comprises a laser range finder, computer, and haptics generator. By placing the device on a glass casing (we are very familiar with this as many companies like to put their prototype devices in a see-no-touch … Read more

Advanced gamer hardware may soon allow PacBot operators to tell exactly how hard a robot's grip is, allowing soldiers to more safely pick up and handle fragile or dangerous objects, while also increasing their situational awareness.

Novint Technologies, a company that makes 3D touch controllers for video and computer games, announced last month that it has been awarded a subcontract to co-develop a remote touch kit (RTK) for the iRobot unmanned ground vehicle (UGV) PacBot.

The new RTK will allow soldiers to tactually sense the amount of force a robot is exerting from a safe operating distance--a first for … Read more