It’s not that touchscreen keyboards are horrible, but it’s nearly impossible to touch type on an iPad or other tablet keyboard. A team at the Media Computing Group at Aachen University figured out how to put a series of electromagnets underneath a display to provide haptic feedback for touchscreens. They showed off their tech at the 2011 UIST conference and made their paper available.
For the FingerFlux, as the team likes to call it, a bed of tiny electromagnets is placed underneath a panel display. The user wears a ‘thimble’ with an attached permanent magnet. Driving the bed of electromagnets slightly moves the magnet and provides a little bit of sensation to the user.
The FingerFlux can be used to provide haptic feedback like a keyboard. The system can also be used to model constraints – making sure that users don’t move outside the controls they operate, and can guide the user to the desired button.
A bed of electromagnets would be a welcome addition to tablets, if only to prevent typung luje rhus. Check out the demo of the FingerFlux after the break.
Thanks go to [John] for sending this one in.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=trM7mXOjNFY&w=470]
So now I have to wear gloves with tiny neodymium magnets embedded into the fingertips? How long will it take before they break?
probably very fast if it is running windows! lol
Hahaha, that made me laugh.
Some of us already have magnets implanted in our fingers…
I am extremely sceptical about anything that requires putting on gloves but it is an interesting proof of concept. Maybe the technology used for wireless charging could be used to create the magnetic field to precisely produce the tactile feedback at will and also, who knows, it would allow charging the phone by placing it on top of the screen. Maybe someone could embed a big screen on a table and place this thing below and you could have a big table with tactile feedback and capable of charging phones.
so we return back to stylus, magnetic stylus
Id let them implant magnets in my fingers if the resolution would be greatly improved :-)
The robotic overlords would like you. Adapting man to the machine, rather than the machine adapting to man. ;)
I seriously want to implant tiny magnets in my fingers, it would add whole new sensory organ, just dont know how to do it properly
I seem to remember something about that, I think here on Hackaday. The downside for the guy trying it out is eventually the magnet kills the tissue between it and the surface you’re interacting with.
I mean, makes sense when you think about the fact that the magnet is drawn towards ferrous material outside your skin.
Can’t find the article… Must not’ve been on hackaday… =/
Magnets in your fingers?
Who is gonna handle your credit cards for you ;)?
http://www.wired.com/gadgets/mods/news/2006/06/71087?currentPage=all
Magnet in fingers:
Contact: Steve Haworth in Arizona–he does lots of body modifications and magnet implants is one of them.
Interesting tech, I’m not sure to how much overall benefit it has for mobile devices. Electromagnets require a ferrous metal core for any kind of precision of the electromagnetic field, even with aluminum wire windings this will add weight. There is the additional demand on the battery. Battery life, and weight both seem to be two criteria by which mobile devices are judged. The brain is going to hard wire new pathways to learn a new tactile sensation. The older the person, the more effort, time that will take. I wonder how long it will be for some hacker to create a facsimile of this to control input into a project they are making?
Gloves would be a plus, do you know how dirty keyboards are? Even touch screens. So i would not mind gloves at all. If the resolution gets way better then this would be useful.
Imaging disabled people who can not keep a steady hand on a touch screen. This would be so good for them.
I was actually thinking more towards the visually impaired, but I have a friend with MS and there are a lot of possibile uses for such a system.
Haha, thanks for the inspiration!
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*computer begins dragging finger towards OK*
“Noooooo!”
Finger finger finger OBJECTION!
PCB coils ought to work here, with printed iron 400um particles suspended in RTV adhesive in the centre of each coil.
To add field strength, stack multiple boards with through hole vias and then use solder balls held in indents on the top of each board then melt the stack together in one operation.
Any chance this will work?
Re. implanted magnets
Seems that the trick is to plate the magnet with titanium and then pyrolytic graphite, so that the body just ignores it.
This is used on hip prosthetics and a lot of other
implantable devices.
What WOULD be nice is an implantable >128GB shielded pendrive with 3G, wifi and bluetooth interfaces powered by the heat of the body.
Never lose your data again!
OK, so i know it’s EXTREME, but combine THIS touchscreen upgrade with 6th sense(http://www.wired.com/gadgets/mods/news/2006/06/71087?currentPage=all)
Now you have a braille touch screen reader!
Fuck you! I had this idea in the lunch queue yesterday. Though in my version there’s an array of solenoids which deforms a flexible display, and responds to touch.
I find typing on an iPad only slightly less functional then you average laptop keyboard.
This lies mostly that a lot of special characters are hidden behind alternative keyboard mappings.
Just like a small laptop keyboard I default to eight fingered typing instead of ten like I do on my big-ass split wedged ergonomic board.
I think that the tactile feedback of a button is a secondary perceived function that resulted from the basic implementation of the concept “button”. The amount of mechanical tactile response on keyboards over the years has greatly decreased also(which also cause a few arguments here and there). It’s just that people have grown accustomed to mechanical buttons and therefor think they somehow rely on this feature.
The only real advantage of a dedicated plank with buttons is surface real-estate and combination keys.
During the coming decade, people will grow up that will barely come into contact with the old button paradigm and will prefer a flat on-screen input method.
I think this with a finer array and varying magnet strength, and a tablet pen in place of a finger magnet woudl give you the feel of the surface you were sculpting in 3d sculpting packages, or even the feel of canvas types when painting.
Very cool.
There’s no need for magnets on the fingers. Water in the body is diamagnetic, and naturally creates a repulsive force when exposed to magnetic fields. So, all you need is a sufficiently strong magnet. About 15 teslas should do the trick.
This looks…. very expensive
but now you have to build app dimensions around every single touchscreen based product cause of where the electromagnets are located so im against this