New
Scientist: Microsoft is developing a way to create
temporary bumps, ridges, and other textural features on a
touchscreen, writes Paul Marks for
New Scientist. The tactile touchscreen works by using
a layer of shape-memory plastic to distort the surface of the
screen when different wavelengths of ultraviolet light strike
the screen's pixels from beneath. Large table-sized computing
displays such as Microsoft's
Surface are the
target application, rather than phones or tablets. "Creating
well-defined bumps on a touch surface is in many ways the holy
grail of text entry on touch devices because it would enable
touch typing at much faster speeds than on touchscreens today,"
says Patrick Baudisch, a display interaction expert at the
University of Potsdam in Germany.
