Introducing touchscreens with “temporary keys”, tactile keys which disappear after use
June 14, 2012 5
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SID’s (Society for Information Display) Display Week 2012 held at Boston from 3 – 8 June, 2012 saw the revelation of a touchscreen prototype by Tactus Technology which might come out to be of great use to a considerable part of the touch screen user population.
The company, which marked the product to be in Alpha stage, displayed a prototype Android tablet equipped with the “temporary keyboard”. The keyboard gets activated upon user command, and it can act as a proper tactile guide which would help you in better placement of your fingers on the screen.The “keys” rise out of the screen and also provide you with haptic feedback to enable more of the feel of a physical keypad and to act as a confirmation of selection. “Microfluids” is the technology upon which the product is built.
As noted by The Verge,
Beneath the surface of a fairly ordinary-looking touchscreen are a number of channels that can be arrange in any pattern a manufacturer desires, and a small reservoir of fluid (a special type of oil that allows the channels to be invisible, for the most part). To form the shapes of the keys, a tiny amount of fluid is pumped through the channels, which raises a deformable membrane covering the surface of the touchscreen. For now, the channels need to be made in a predetermined pattern — say, an outline of a QWERTY keyboard for a tablet — but the long-term goal would be to have much finer control over a wide-ranging variety of patterns, so different apps and configurations can all take advantage of the potential for offering greater physical feedback.
Though this innovation doesn’t improve autocorrect, it surely brings calm to the mind of a certain group of users who have not been able to get comfortable with traditionaltouchscreen keyboards. And, as an added bonus, the manufacturer claims a device equipped with this tactile keyboard also comes with an added benefit of increased battery life.
Though the company has not yet entered into any deal with hardware manufacturers, it expects to bring the product to market by 2013. Tactus Technology also plans to look into implementing the technology in automobiles, as the use of touchscreens in cars are on the rise.
Have you been among ones who have had difficulties typing on the keyboard-less touchscreens? Do you find yourself happy after hearing this news? Share your thoughts with us in the comments below.
[via The Verge | Image Credit: CNN]
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I must admit that’s pretty cool, and is definitely suitable for tiny mobile devices. And with just a 2% battery drain on average use per day, I thought it would be much higher than that.
@Zapped Sparky: I wonder what effect it has on screen life? And what about portrait mode — does it work for that, too?
Nonetheless, it does sound awesome.
Wow, it sure does sound like cool technology! I have a hunch this will be the thing of the future. Kind of like “touch screen”! heh! Are they selling stock yet?
Being in Alpha, I’m sure they’ll work out all the bugs! ;)
I wonder how many other companies are working on this technology too, or even something similar? I have a suggestion…maybe if they experimented with scented oils, and invent a built in emitter of some sort, we can finally have smell-a-vision! That would be cool too ( unless you’re NOT watching a cooking show, then that could be ewww! lol)
The things that this kind of technology can bring, some good, some bad, some perverted, but it does sound like the beginnings of a new generation of things to come.
If I’m still on this planet when it comes to full bloom, I’ll have to actually get a touch screen something, since I don’t even own one now.
Ok, back to my coffee. I’m a little silly when I just wake up! :D Thanks for the excellent read Godwin!
@Ashraf: I guess since it’ll be flexible it may not have a very good scratch/wear resistance, and all (?) transparent materials that are flexible tend to go opaque after a while, just from bending.
@Ashraf: Since the channels under the screen are designed to form only specific patterns, it won’t able to work in Portrait mode as of now. But from what I could infer about the design, it seems like it won’t be difficult to build one that will support both landscape and portrait mode.
@Mary: I just found that there had been a similar (but functionally different) keyboard planned for iPad by Apple: TouchFire