Tactile

​Dennis Aabo Sørensen may be missing a hand, but he nonetheless recently felt rough and smooth textures using a fingertip on that arm. The fingertip was electronic, and was surgically hard-wired to nerves in his upper arm.

We've already seen a number of systems designed to alert blind users to objects in their path, using cues such as audio tones or vibrations. The "Proximity Hat," however, applies pressure to the wearer's head, in the direction of the obstacle.​

​Suppose you had a tablet that only displayed one line of text at a time. It would be pretty frustrating, but it's a limitation that blind users of braille-displaying devices are faced with constantly. Thanks to new technolog, however, full-page braille tablets could soon be on their way.​

A mechanical hand utilizing DARPA-developed neural technologies has become the first to allow a paralyzed patient to feel physical sensations through a prosthesis. The test subject was able to determine which mechanical finger was being touched whilst blindfolded, with total accuracy.

In what could just as easily prove to be a very bad idea as it could a good one, a startup company called Feelreal has created a virtual reality mask and helmet that lets you smell virtual environments as well as feel a little of their atmosphere.

Phorm is a case for the iPad mini that features clear round buttons that rise up over top of the characters on the tablet's virtual keyboard, giving users the tactile sensation of using a physical keyboard. When not needed, those buttons simply disappear.

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.