21–30 of 68 posts
why couldn’t it be done on an off-the-shelf 28-byj-48 stepper? The reason is probably explained somewhere in the article, I just can’t find where
There is also the weight and energy consumption to consider.
People may be better off gluing a small bead to one side of a flip dot display. =)
(It would probably be required to multiplex the voltage between different dots, so that the finger current always flows within the small area of individual dots, rather than between dots.)
You only need to feel something, there doesn't need to be anything there - is it possible to have a voltage or capacitance charge or signal at a point which feels like a presence? "A smooth surface which feels lumpy" seems intuitively unlikely but stranger things have happened.
Braille was designed for paper. Maybe there's an interface that is easier to actuate using motors if you don't absolutely require it to be Braille.
I often wonder how much productivity we're leaving on the table by not making systems that are harder to learn but more efficient.
As someone blind, my two pens are that noise, power consumption, and fragility are things that could be compromised to a large degree. If I've had a braille display at school and uni, it would've helped with many of my math issues. If it works and it is cheap, it would be a big step forward for many people. Power is not that expensive compared to the current displays, noise could be mitegated or just powered through,…
I wonder if one could combine a low-fidelity braille display (maybe with heat or vibration (piezoelectricity)) with touch sensitivity and context-sensitive tts in response to touching/reading the display.
From this pdf[1] it seems fingers have 3-5 cold sensing points per square cm, with cold sensing points being about 10x as prevalent as warm sensing points.
So I was thinking about using a combination of a thermoelectric cooler[2] coupled to some thin metal rods, which have individually wound coils around them near the top. The rods would be mounted flush to allow touching all of them at once. The cooler would ensure the rods are normally cold, and the coils would provide induction heating.
Thus by changing which coils are activated, the different rods would be either cold or not, and due to the active cooling and relatively low thermal mass should change state quite quickly. At least that's the idea.
Though perhaps we just don't have enough sensitivity in our fingers to pick this up. And it wouldn't work well for a portable device due to power draw.
edit: Found this[4] paper where they try a temporal method instead of spatial method to use temperature to convey information.
[1]: https://web.as.uky.edu/Biology/faculty/cooper/bio350/Bio350%...
[2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermoelectric_cooling
Fantastic effort, but oddly and almost shockingly archaic. This is seriously the way the problem is being solved? Why isn’t it microelectronics or MEMS? If we can print 3μm OLED pixels surely there’s a way to lift a discrete 1.6mm dot, especially with that huge 2.5mm spacing. Even adjacent dots ought to be no big deal. Maybe a haptic kludge or grid of air pressure nozzles? I have a personal theory of invention that s…
[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j_rErbhxNFM (4 minutes
Fantastic effort, but oddly and almost shockingly archaic. This is seriously the way the problem is being solved? Why isn’t it microelectronics or MEMS? If we can print 3μm OLED pixels surely there’s a way to lift a discrete 1.6mm dot, especially with that huge 2.5mm spacing. Even adjacent dots ought to be no big deal. Maybe a haptic kludge or grid of air pressure nozzles? I have a personal theory of invention that s…
Doesn't look like it's MEMS? Unless each individual cell is a MEMS, but that seems strange. Maybe MEMS devices can't generate sufficient force?
"MEMS actuator braille" has many research hits, but no obvious product.
Tiny pinpoint holes, blow air through them. Could you adjust the size of the holes and the flow of the air so you could feel them distinctly? If so, they could be backed by much larger, far away, valves without the mechanical parts needing to be so fine and precise. You only need to feel something, there doesn't need to be anything there - is it possible to have a voltage or capacitance charge or signal at a point wh…
The difficulty with fluidic logic is that the devices from the original flowering of the field don't work at the low Reynolds numbers found in smaller devices. Maybe something from the new micro fluidic field would work, but I don't know if they can control sufficient pressure to be felt, or to raise a rubber membrane.
Tiny pinpoint holes, blow air through them. Could you adjust the size of the holes and the flow of the air so you could feel them distinctly? If so, they could be backed by much larger, far away, valves without the mechanical parts needing to be so fine and precise. You only need to feel something, there doesn't need to be anything there - is it possible to have a voltage or capacitance charge or signal at a point wh…
I wonder how well it would work if you did something similar to Force Touch, but instead of one uniform trackpad it were separated into a matrix of small dots.