Gesture recognition with touch and feel part 2: Rendering 3D Tactile Features on Touch Surface
In my last post I discussed about Disney Research project called Aireal,
which adds physical sensation to virtual interactions like the
Microsoft Kinect. It uses puffs of directed air to give you the
sensation you're actually touching something you see on the screen. Now
they've moved on to touchscreens in what seems like a no-brainer
follow-up: Adding texture to touch.
Disney
Research has developed an algorithm for the "tactile rendering of 3D
features" on a 2D touchscreen. In other words, the algorithm modifies
the friction between your finger and the 2D screen based on the slope of
the virtual surface. If there's a dome on the screen, for example,
increased fiction would, to some extent, make it feel like your finger
was climbing or passing over a bump.
The
algorithm modifies the voltage of the display to alter its friction, so
different textures will produce a different feeling for your hand.
Disney says it can reproduce ridges, edges, bumps, protrusions, and
other physical sensations. And this isn't some funky touchscreen way to
"fake" the sensation of touch. No, you're not actually feeling a virtual
object, but this is how its sense of touch works to begin with.
"The
algorithm is based on a discovery that when a person slides a finger
over a real physical bump, the person perceives the bump largely because
lateral friction forces stretch and compress skin on the sliding
finger," says Disney's press release.
The best part is, the algorithm is dynamic, which means it can produce
varying touch sensations on the fly. No pre-programmed libraries of
textures to apply to millions of objects.
Some of the immediate
applications are pretty cool to think about--touchscreen games could go
to town with this added element of feedback, and textured topographic
maps of anyplace in the world would be great learning tools for kids.
The Disney video above shows their algorithm being used in plenty of
other situations, too--helping the blind, touching a cactus (why would
you ever want to do that?), and they say it could be integrated into
future touchscreen displays. Cost and simplicity are big question marks
there, but it would be pretty wild if every touchscreen provided
textured feedback five years down the road.
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