Shown in the video above is new 3D touchscreen technology developed by Disney. The touchscreen lets you feel the textures of the objects on your screen, without the screen actually changing shapes. How cool is that?

For the project, the researchers used an electrovibration-based display and a new algorithm developed in-house to allow the human hand to feel the textures of objects as presented on the screen.

The algorithm maps the frictional forces between the screen and the user’s finger to the surface contours of the virtual 3D image presented on the touchscreen. This dynamic allows the system to adjust to various virtual surface sensations on the fly, rather than offering canned sensations as some tactile touchscreen feedback experiments have demonstrated in the past.

What surprises me is that Disney developed it. Who would have thought Disney does this sort of stuff.

[via Geekologie]