TRENDS
The tactile sensations are aligned in the brain
with the visual and audio components, creating
an “immersive experience,” Büttner says. “It’s
all an illusion, but it seems real.”
Applications include the gaming,
automotive, and medical sectors. “We can
make steering wheels more vibrotactile to
alert the driver of different dangers, such
as when the car is veering out of the lane or
another vehicle up ahead just hit the brakes,”
says Büttner. “Each danger would involve a
different tactile feeling, creating a muscle
memory in the brain.”
ULTRALEAP: ULTRASOUND
TACTILE SENSATIONS
Ultraleap is taking haptic technology into a new
realm altogether. The company’s midair haptic
technology harnesses invisible ultrasound
waves to feel, shape, and manipulate objects
visualized in a 3D hologram, literally creating the
sensation of touch in midair.
“We can deliver a sense of touch by using
software that tracks the hand’s movements
and then sends ultrasound waves to the hand
the moment the virtual object is ‘touched,’”
says Anders Hakfelt, senior vice president of
product and marketing at Ultraleap.
The company’s virtual tactile interfaces
have applications in several sectors,
including automotive, advertising, immersive
entertainment, and public transportation.
For example, the technology could assist
a commuter with limited mobility traveling on
a bus. “A simple thing like pressing the stop
button can be tricky in a crowd,” Hakfelt says.
“Using the hand-tracking technology, the tool
can see when someone raises her hand. It is
then able to position the ultrasound to simulate
the feeling of a button in her hand via vibration.
The person taps her hand once, which sends
information to the driver to stop the bus.”
NEWHAPTICS: A BETTER BRAILLE
NewHaptics’ singular purpose is to improve
the lives of blind people by enabling more
immersive digital interactions. While people
who are visually impaired or blind can read
electronic content using current assistive
technologies like thumb keys that allow
readers to move back and forth across
braille dots, these tools are restricted in
their capabilities.
“A limited view of the digital world is
available to the blind, with no means of
accessing spatial content like diagrams and
graphs, much less full-page refreshable
information,” says Alex Russomanno,
NewHaptics’ co-founder and CEO.
The company’s novel technology borrows
from the Pinscreen toy from the 1980s that
consisted of a box with a crowded array of
pins, in which people stuck their hands or
faces into the pin box to create an exact 3D
sculptural relief. NewHaptics has traded the
pins for tactile pixels called “taxels” that rise
to the surface of a tablet to produce images
like a diagram, bar chart, or line chart, as well
as full-page displays of refreshable braille text.
Funded by the National Science
Foundation and the National Institutes of
Health, NewHaptics’ small-scale prototype is
composed of 60 taxels in a small grid. A larger
prototype is now in the works, funded by the
same organizations. “What is exciting for us
is to help people who are blind to process
information in ways they haven’t [been able
to] before,” says Russomanno.
In doing so, touch is taking on new meaning
and value. ■
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