Despite how advanced touchscreen devices such as smartphones and tablets have grown, traditional buttons and controls are still often a superior way for people to interact with gadgets. So Texas A&M researchers devised a revolutionary method for touchscreens to feel more than simply absolutely smooth by deceiving a user’s sense of touch through temperature variations.
High-fidelity touch has the ability to considerably broaden the scope of what we anticipate from computing devices, allowing for novel remote sensory experiences. The research on these developments, headed by a pair of academics from Texas A&M University’s J. Mike Walker ’66 Department of Mechanical Engineering, could enable touchscreens to imitate virtual shapes.
Dr. Cynthia Hipwell investigates friction at the finger-device level, whereas Dr. Jonathan Felts investigates friction in the interaction between single skin cells and the glass of the touchscreen interface. The two are combining their individual areas of expertise to apply friction principles at the nanoscale level to finger-device interaction mechanics.
Hipwell emphasized the importance of the endeavor by comparing it to present technologies for transmitting immersive and accurate information via high-fidelity audio and video.
The touch sensations that would be required to truly immerse yourself in a totally digital environment require enormous breakthroughs in touch perception. What we’ve done is effectively invented a completely new mechanism to modulate touch perception that didn’t exist before.
Steve Brauer
“We can see digitally recorded or remotely transmitted music and video on a screen in incredible detail,” Hipwell, Oscar S. Wyatt, Jr. ’45 Chair II professor, explained. “We don’t have that capability with touch on a touchscreen yet. Imagine being able to feel the skin of a snake from another continent or the fabric of clothing you wish to buy online.”
Another application of this technology that has recently gotten a lot of attention is the enhancement of immersive virtual worlds like the projected metaverse.
“The touch sensations that would be required to truly immerse yourself in a totally digital environment require enormous breakthroughs in touch perception,” said Felts, associate professor, and Steve Brauer, Jr. ’02 Faculty Fellow. “What we’ve done is effectively invented a completely new mechanism to modulate touch perception that didn’t exist before.”
As folding screen technology become more dependable, robust, and prevalent in our mobile devices, it is expected that laptops will eventually become totally touchscreen-driven, with virtual software keyboards replacing physical keys. It’s a novel concept that has the potential to broaden the utility of laptop computers. However, the ability to feel physical keys with our fingers is a vital part of the muscle memory that allows many of us to type at breakneck speeds without having to look down and hunt-and-peck on a keyboard.
The team is attempting to demonstrate that it is possible to simulate the distinct mechanical and thermal sensations associated with various surface textures and forms. Their latest paper in the journal Science Robotics reveals the possibility of interpreting these sensations on a touchscreen just through temperature variation, rather than expressing them via ultrasonic vibrations or electroadhesion methods.
“The degree of the friction increase we were able to accomplish actually astonished us,” Hipwell added. “Its magnitude is competitive with current surface haptic devices, implying that friction modulation in surface-haptic device rendering has another alternative.”
Another intriguing advance, according to Hipwell, is that their research has demonstrated that it is possible to localize friction to the outer layer of the skin and manage friction without making the gadget feel heated, at least at swipe rates. Felts stated that as the research progresses, many of the remaining challenges concern how easily the approach may be incorporated into consumer devices and marketed.
“Is it possible to reduce the size? Is it capable of responding swiftly enough? Is it capable of simulating a wide range of surfaces? Is it affordable? We believe these are valid concerns, but we look forward to leveraging this phenomenon to advance our fundamental understanding of haptic feedback as well as exploring miniaturization and commercialization opportunities “He stated.
The team is continuing their work to address the approach’s issues by delving deeper into the complexity of the finger-device interface and variations caused by environmental and skin-property variables. They also intend to investigate design improvements for miniaturization and touchscreen integration.
There is still a long way to go before this idea becomes a feasible way to make virtual touchscreen keyboards more user-friendly. Being able to quickly heat and cool a specific region of a touchscreen almost instantly is a massive problem to solve in and of itself, but given that folding screen devices are the latest trend that device makers are relying on to sell premium hardware, there’s certainly financial incentive to realize an approach like this.
