THE only way to operate an increasing number of modern devices, from smartphones to cash machines and cars, is the deft use of a finger on a touchscreen, with a tap for this and a swipe for that. But sometimes such actions do not work all that well. It is easy to miss the required key on a tiny virtual keyboard and produce splling eworrs. Sometimes the screen fails to respond at all. And it can be downright dangerous to take your eyes off the road to flip through myriad air-conditioning options on a vehicle’s control panel. Now help, as it were, is at hand. As touchscreens become ubiquitous on devices, new ways to make and use them are emerging.
Robert Bosch, a German producer of car parts, among other things, recently displayed a touchscreen with “haptic feedback”. Visual effects, sounds and vibrations are already used with touchscreens to confirm when icons or keys are selected. What the Bosch system does is to add different surface textures to the mix.
The textures on the screen can be rough, smooth or patterned in various ways to represent the location of different buttons with different uses. The idea is that a driver would be able...Continue reading
Source: Science and technology http://ift.tt/1Plbk4i
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