Interfaces  

San Francisco-based designer Mattaeus Krenn has come up with an ingenious concept of how touch screen controls in cars should actually work.

According to designer Matthaeus Krenn, the touch screens increasingly being used in cars increase driver distraction, as the manufacturers merely replicate old button layouts and shapes onto multitouch input surfaces.

"Their eagerness to set new trends in hardware, is not matched by their ambition to create innovative software experiences for these new input mechanisms," writes Krenn on his website.

In Krenn's concept, even controls for air conditioning and infotainment can easily be controlled based on the number of fingers that are engaged in the interaction.
This makes up for the lack tactile feedback on the touchscreen and require the driver’s dexterity and attention.

Related articles How Car Dashboards are Turning Into Computers  Should Car Makers Give Up On Mobile-Connected Infotainment?  Ultrahaptic Prototype Lets You Feel Gesture Controls In Mid-Air

In Krenn's proposal a new mode can be invoked at any time: It clears the entire screen of all control elements and makes way for big, forgiving gesture that can be performed anywhere. "In place of the lost tactile feedback, the interface leverages the driver’s muscle memory to ensure their ability to control crucial features without taking their eyes off the road," he says.

 Visit Krenn's site to download a prototype of the interface.


SOURCE  Matthaeus Krenn

By 33rd Square

Subscribe to 33rd Square

 Computer Interfaces  

Prototype 'ultrahaptic' technology developed at the University of Bristol allows users to feel when they control their computers with mid-air hand movements.

Researchers at the University of Bristol have demonstrated a mid-air tactile feedback prototype system that allows people to interact with computer interfaces by touching invisible fields in the air above them while performing gestures.

UltraHaptics allows people interacting with a screen to feel what is displayed and also receive invisible information before touching it.

The technology works through the use of acoustic radiation force, projected through ultrasonic transducers. These emit very high frequency sound waves which when they meet mid-air, create a sensation on a person's skin.

By combining several waves, the researchers were able to create multiple points of tactile feedback with different properties that can be distinguished by users.

Related articles MYO Brings Mobility To Gesture Control Interfaces  Elon Musk Demonstrates His Iron Man-Inspired 3D Modeling Setup  Use Gesture Interfaces Throughout Your Home Using Only a WiFi Signal

One of the researchers working on the UltraHaptics project, PhD student Tom Carter, said current multi-touch systems with integrated interactive surfaces allow users to use them with their bare hands, but people cannot feel what is on the screen.

The researchers aimed to build in haptic feedback into existing interactive surfaces without sacrificing their ease of use and accessibility.

"To achieve this, we have designed a system with an ultrasound transducer array positioned beneath an acoustically transparent display," Carter said.  The team also used a Leap Motion sensor to capture the user's hand motions and position.

"This arrangement allows the projection of focused ultrasound through the interactive surface and directly onto the users' bare hands. By creating multiple simultaneous feedback points, and giving them individual tactile properties, users can receive localized feedback associated to their actions."



SOURCE  The Guardian

By 33rd Square

Subscribe to 33rd Square

 Human-Computer Interface  

University of California, San Diego researchers have demonstrated a new user interface technology: electronic recording and replay of human touch.

Researchers at the University of California, San Diego report a breakthrough in technology that could pave the way for digital systems to record, store, edit and replay information in a dimension that goes beyond what we can see or hear: touch.

“Touch was largely bypassed by the digital revolution, except for touch-screen displays, because it seemed too difficult to replicate what analog haptic devices – or human touch – can produce,” said Deli Wang, a professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering (ECE) in UC San Diego’s Jacobs School of Engineering.

“But think about it: being able to reproduce the sense of touch in connection with audio and visual information could create a new communications revolution.”

In addition to uses in health and medicine, the communication of touch signals could have far-reaching implications for education, social networking, e-commerce, robotics, gaming, and military applications, among others. The sensors and sensor arrays reported in the paper are also fully transparent (see optical image of transparent ZnO TFT sensor array at right), which makes it particularly interesting for touch-screen applications in mobile devices.

The research has been published in Scientific Reports.

Related articles Robots For Everybody  Use Gesture Interfaces Throughout Your Home Using Only a WiFi Signal  Elon Musk Demonstrates His Iron Man-Inspired 3D Modeling Setup

The tactile feedback display system demonstrated in the article has some of real-time reproduction and modification of touch contact with temporal and spatial resolutions. Over the last few years, there has been significant progress on the development of flexible and sensitive pressure sensors, as well as tactile feedback displays for specific applications such as for remote palpation that could be used during laparoscopic surgery.


“Our sense of touch plays a significant role in our daily lives, particularly in personal interaction, learning and child development, and that is especially true for the development of preemies,” said Nguyen, another senior author of this Scientific Reports paper. “We were approached by colleagues in the UC San Diego School of Medicine’s neonatology group to see if there was a way to record a session of a mother holding the baby, which could be replayed at a different time in an incubator.”

In their paper, the researchers reported the electronic recording of touch contact and pressure using an active-matrix pressure sensor array made of transparent zinc-oxide (ZnO), thin-film transistors (TFTs). The companion tactile feedback display used an array of diaphragm actuators made of an acrylic-based dielectric elastomer with the structure of an interpenetrating polymer network (IPN). The polymer actuators’ actuation – the force and level of displacement – are modulated by adjusting both the voltage and charging time.

One of the critical challenges in developing touch systems is that the sensation is not one thing. It can involve the feeling of physical contact, force or pressure, hot and cold, texture and deformation, moisture or dryness, and pain or itching. “It makes it very difficult to fully record and reproduce the sense of touch,” said Wang.

The ability to digitize the touch contact enables direct remote transfer of touch information, long-term memory storage, and replay at a later time. “In addition, with the ability to reproduce and change the feeling of touch with both temporal and spatial resolutions make it possible to produce synthesized touch,” said UC San Diego’s Wang. “It could create experiences that do not exist in nature, as we have done with computer-generated imagery and synthesized music.”




SOURCE  UC San Diego

By 33rd Square

Subscribe to 33rd Square