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.

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.

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.

Described by its creators as the first freeform software controller, Palette is a range of buttons, dials and sliders made so that creative types can design their own hardware interfaces for their software of choice, be it for music creation, photo-editing or gaming.

Aireal is a new haptic technology from Disney Research which fires small rings of air that allow people to feel virtual objects without actually touching anything.

ProDot is an adhesive silicone dot which attaches to the shutter-button of your camera and is said to make it more tactile.