There are 3.6 Million deafblind people in the world, and by far their greatest problem is one of communication. For his entry for the Hackaday Prize, our own miracle worker on hackaday.io is creating a system that enables haptic communication for a variety of devices. It’s called Tact-Tiles, and instead of creating a single device, [Anderson] is building an entire system that enables a multitude of communication devices for deafblind people.
The basic unit of the Tact Tile system is a small, touch sensitive vibrating pad. These tiny PCBs can be fitted to just about anything, including a wired glove, or whatever haptic interface anyone can dream up. The core of the device is a small PCB that can control 32 of these vibrating pads, and communicates with a smartphone or computer over a Bluetooth connection.
With a little bit of software, the Tact Tiles can be configured an any way imaginable, with mapping individual tiles to letters of the alphabet, mapping gestures to letters, or any combination in between. [Anderson] has a great video demoing the possibility of his device, you can check that out below.
Am I the first one to wonder if this could be used to redesign the haptic GPS belt?
I had the same thought