Microsoft this week filed a patent application covering a novel way to construct a "tactile" touchscreen – a display that uses technical tricks to convince users they are actually touching the ridges, bumps and textures of a displayed image.
Whereas previous screens produced only an illusion of texture, Microsoft proposes producing a real texture, using pixel-sized shape-memory plastic cells that can be ordered to protrude from the surface on command.
UV switch
In US patent application 2010/0295820, published yesterday, Microsoft proposes using a layer of shape-memory plastic placed above a large touchscreen to distort the surface of the screen when different wavelengths of ultraviolet light strike the pixels from beneath.
Microsoft's named inventor, Erez Kikin-Gil at the firm's Redmond campus in Washington state, says in the patent that the idea is aimed at large table-sized computing displays such as the company's Surface, rather than phones or tablets.
A projector built into the Surface displays a computer image onto the table top from below. In the patent, Microsoft proposes coating the display with a light-induced shape-memory polymer. By modulating these wavelengths, texture can be created, the patent claims.
End of keypads
Do you still questioning the effectiveness and user friendliness of the touch screen keyboards.
"Creating well-defined bumps on a touch surface is in many ways the holy grail of text entry on touch devices because it would enable touch typing at much faster speeds than on touchscreens today," he says.
Monday, November 29, 2010
