The invisible touchscreen may be close to reality. Researchers have created a device that allows users to experience haptic feedback (feelings of vibrations etc. that help one gain information) without touching or holding anything.
Many public spaces, such as malls, employ touchscreen devices to provide customers with information. Now those customers will be able to feel what they are touching without actually touching anything at all, a University of Bristol press release reported.
The researchers will reveal UltraHaptics, "a system designed to provide multipoint, mid-air haptic feedback above a touch surface, at this year's ACM Symposium on User Interface Software and Technology.
"UltraHaptics uses the principle of acoustic radiation force where a phased array of ultrasonic transducers is used to exert forces on a target in mid-air. Haptic sensations are projected through a screen and directly onto the user's hands," the press release stated.
Ultrasonic transducers emit sound waves of an extremely high frequency. When the sound waves all crash together in one location they can create a sensation on the skin.
The researchers created applications for "mid-air gestures, tactile information layers and visually restricted displays." They also found they could create individual feedback points that were outside the realm of perception that the human hand could experience.
"Current systems with integrated interactive surfaces allow users to walk-up and use them with bare hands. Our goal was to integrate haptic feedback into these systems without sacrificing their simplicity and accessibility," Carter said.
"To achieve this, we have designed a system with an ultrasound transducer array positioned beneath an acoustically transparent display. 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," he said.
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