Next For Touchscreens: Temporary Pop-Up Buttons?

• tech watch
• haptics
• LCD
• touchscreens
• inventions

Touchscreens allow for endlessly adjustable interfaces—well, nearly endless. You can’t operate a touchscreen by feel alone, although engineers working in the field of haptics have used vibrating virtual buttons to provide limited tactile feedback. Now, researchers at Carnegie Mellon University have gone a bit further, designing a screen with hidden latex air bubbles. When buttons are needed, an air pump pops the bubbles up into physical keys. The team tested the technology in a driving simulator, a situation where users don’t—and shouldn’t—devote full attention to electronic displays on GPS and audio systems. “There were only a quarter as many glances away from the road as there were with the touchscreen,” Chris Harrison, a graduate student at CMU who worked on the project, says. Volkswagen is interested in the buttons, according to the researchers. And the technology could eventually find its way into Braille-enabled gadgets.

Comment Title
Your Name
Email Address
Website	make public
Comment
Please enter the characters shown below:
	Make sure your comment is relevant to the topic discussed. Comments not relevant to the topic will be deleted. Neither you nor Popular Mechanics has the ability to make your e-mail address public. However, we ask that you submit your e-mail address to us just in case we need to contact you. Thank you for your understanding--The Editors.