Tactile

Hoping to add back a bit of personal touch to today's cold, impersonal digital communications, New Jersey-based startup Tactonics thinks the world might just get hooked on "tact" messaging.

Just last month, Volvo announced a new system that warns drivers of approaching cyclists via a symbol on their car's head-up display. Not to be outdone, Jaguar Land Rover has just announced its own system, which takes a more tactile approach – among other things, it taps them on the shoulder.

The next frontier in human-computer interaction will be all about making you feel the virtual, digital world as though it were real and tangible. And haptics, a technology that's advanced at a snail's pace over the past 40 years, is the key to making that happen.

Tactile graphics company Touch Graphics and the University of Buffalo's IDeA Center have collaborated to create multi-sensory 3D maps that give spoken directions and building information when touched, along with sound effects and overhead video projection related to a particular place.

Touchscreens may make our lives easier, but they do tend to get smeared, plus they're notorious for spreading germs. That's why a team of researchers have developed the HaptoMime. It's an interface that lets the user feel like they're touching a glass screen, when in fact they're touching nothing.

Three years ago, we first heard about GelSight – an experimental new system for imaging microscopic objects. Now, researchers at MIT and Northeastern University have incorporated it into an ultra-sensitive tactile sensor for robots.

Scientists at Karlsruhe Institute of Technology have developed a method of concealing objects from the sensation of touch that would finally meet the exacting standards of Hans Christian Andersen's fairy tale princess, who felt a single pea prodding her beneath 20 mattresses and 20 feather beds.

Bttn is a seemingly innocuous big red button that can be programmed to achieve a huge range of tasks. By pairing Bttn with IFTTT, a single press of this button can trigger an action in the cloud. Thus bringing online offline.

Fujitsu Labs has developed a prototype haptic sensory tablet that uses ultrasonic vibration to provide tactile feedback to touchscreen users.

A common ailment among stroke patients and the aging, treating a degenerative sense of touch has proven a complex task. A stimulation glove designed to improve tactile perception through small electrical pulses could provide a wearable solution that's unimposing enough for everyday use.

Researchers from the Faculty of Engineering at Israel's Bar Ilan University have developed a prototype contact lens which processes digital images and translates them into tactile sensations to be felt on the user's cornea, allowing them to form a picture of their physical surroundings.

Scientists have used 3D printing technology to transform images taken from the Hubble Space Telescope into tactile pictures for the blind. Astronomers Carol Christian and Antonella Nota are experimenting with 3D models as a means of aiding education for people who cannot study visual images.