
Buttons that morph out of the surface of the device. - jamesbritt
http://www.tactustechnology.com/
======
reneherse
This will be huge for automotive touchscreen applications: I have no doubt it
will save lives.

With current touchscreen interfaces, you rely almost solely on visual cues and
feedback to make correct inputs. Not a good situation while driving, when you
need as much visual attention as possible focused on the road.

The best interfaces for operating complex or dangerous machines have fixed,
haptically identifiable reference points; this allows you to reach out (in the
dark or without shifting visual focus) and make some sort of adjustment
without fumbling or disturbing your flow. If the touchscreen can be elegantly
brought into that realm, so much the better.

Tesla Model S 2.0 perhaps?

BTW, anyone have an idea of how this technology works?

Update: From the article linked below in a comment by kpozin, it's based on
hydraulics. Ingenious.

~~~
run4yourlives
Similar to kiba's comment below, but perhaps a step in between, it would make
sense for car designers to look at other similarly complex machines that
require the operator's constant attention to the outside world before
innovating blindly.

HOTAS (Hands on Throttle and Stick) as a concept has been adopted almost
exclusively in fighter aircraft - and extended into Formula 1 and Indy cars as
well - for this exact purpose.

The modern car dashboard design is beyond stupid, almost criminally so when
you start to see 12 inch _video screens_ placed _underneath the windscreen_ in
such a way that the driver has to take his attention off the road to use
pretty much anything in the car.

Tactile feedback isn't going to help much if you are fumbling with controls
floating an arms length away between you and the passenger.

There is plenty of room on the steering wheel for _all_ of the car's
functional controls, especially if you make use of a HUD/windscreen visual
menu and multifunction controls. I almost exclusively use my 5 button steering
wheel control to manage my entire audio experience while driving right now.

I'm not sure how many people will need to be killed before something like that
becomes the norm. Of course, seatbelts and airbags both required their fair
share of human sacrifice before the car gods decided lowly operators warranted
them, so maybe kiba is onto something. :-)

~~~
snowwrestler
Unless they're in a dogfight, airplanes do not require constant attention to
the outside world. That's why autopilots and drones are technologies that have
been available in the aerospace industry for years, but are just now getting
good enough to consider in cars.

Also consider the amount of training that goes into becoming a fighter pilot,
vs. learning to drive a car. Powerful interfaces are complex and require a lot
of training to manage properly under stress--which is when it is most
important to do it right.

That said, modern cars do have a lot of controls on the steering wheel: all
the typical blinkers, brights, horn, etc. and now often radio controls, cruise
control, telephone Bluetooth controls, even gear shifting paddles.

HUD has been tried in cars before, but never caught on. Drivers tended to find
it more distracting than helpful. Most of the information for driving does not
need to be so..."contextual", the way that, say, a missile targeting system
does. Anything that intercedes itself directly between the driver's eyes and
the outside world could be dangerous.

I do agree with you that the touchscreens in the dash are frickin awful UI
design. I think they are like the "store" setting on LCD TVs--their main job
is to look cool in the showroom.

~~~
run4yourlives
Dogfighting/takeoff/landing is a lot closer to driving in traffic than it is
to general flying. The point being that a complete awareness of your
surroundings is essential in all of these situations.

 _Also consider the amount of training that goes into becoming a fighter
pilot, vs. learning to drive a car. Powerful interfaces are complex and
require a lot of training to manage properly under stress--which is when it is
most important to do it right._

This strengthens my point. If something as complex as a fighter jet can have
its core functions displayed in an easy to use display in that keeps the
pilot's "head up", then certainly we can do it for cars.

 _HUD has been tried in cars before, but never caught on. Drivers tended to
find it more distracting than helpful._

That's because that "HUD" consisted of a an annoying little speedometer that
was pretty much out of the line of sight. Today, we have much more information
delivered to the driver in general - the most distracting being GPS/Map data
and cell phone operation. These are perfect for HUD use.

I'm talking about something like this:
[http://www.carpages.co.uk/bmw/bmw-7-series-
part-1-19-11-08.a...](http://www.carpages.co.uk/bmw/bmw-7-series-
part-1-19-11-08.asp)

~~~
snowwrestler
That graphic is hilarious. WTF do all those cryptic numbers and arrows mean??
Even if I knew, I would have to stare at them for a second or two to collect
and parse the data.

You might start by asking yourself why, in 2012, almost every car still comes
with an analog (dial-style) speedometer. The answer is that they are
unambiguous and easily scanned. You do not need to actually read the numbers,
and can collect the speed data in a quick eye flick (well under 1 second).
Again: everyone already tried digital speed readouts in the 1980s. They
sucked.

Engineering and innovation create continuous pressure on good user interfaces.
The Google homepage is a well-known example from the web of a UI that
successfully resisted this pressure to very good effect. (Although even the
Google homepage is slowly succumbing.)

Consider something like GPS. The greatest visual interface for GPS directions
is none at all. The driver in need of directions should be able to ask for
them verbally and receive instructions verbally--that way they can maintain
their visual scan. In the age of paper maps, everyone knew it was silly to try
to drive and unfold and read a map at the same time...somehow this common
wisdom has been forgotten just because we can use pixels now.

------
kpozin
Here's a brief article about Tactus:
[http://www.theverge.com/2012/6/5/3064674/tactus-
technology-p...](http://www.theverge.com/2012/6/5/3064674/tactus-technology-
prototype-touchscreen-appearing-disappearing-keys)

Looks like the button locations are fixed for now, but they're hoping to make
them adjustable in the future.

~~~
wmeredith
If you could make the grid small enough, it wouldn't mater that they were
fixed if you could activate regions to form whole buttons.

~~~
Jare
Many narrow independent regions could cause visibility to suffer.

------
Permit
The video can be found here: <http://vimeo.com/43431035>

I really dislike the voice-over they have, but that might be personal
preference. It just sounds like a regular person imitating a professional
voice actor to me.

~~~
OzzyB
Yep, shame they went for the Faux-Matrix-Morpheus voice over.

~~~
jonny_eh
That's funny, I thought it was reminiscent of Agent Smith.

------
anigbrowl
I am sure the first generation is going to be fraught with problems, but this
looks so good that I would badly like to own part of this company. Massive
game changer, with the sort of technology I thought to be 5-10 years out.
Unqualified thumbs up from me.

~~~
koeselitz
Same here; it seems like the range of applications is incredibly broad.

------
hacknjack
This would be a killer feature for me if the buttons had some kind of
depression, so I could feel the button before actually pressing it. Without
that feature it's just a bumpy touch screen which isn't all that much better
than a flat one in my opinion.

~~~
geon
Would the bubble create a non touch sensitive surface, since it is at a
distance from the screen? Assuming it can be pressed flat against the glass
before the touch screen beneath detects a touch, you have pretty much what you
want.

There would still be touch sensitive areas between the bubbles, which might be
a problem, depending on the app.

------
akavi
Judging by the video, it looks like the layout of the buttons is fixed, only
their presence is toggleable.

If so, that's a bit of a bummer.

~~~
earbitscom
A bummer. Now, _that_ is classic.

I remember using public payphones just a little over a decade ago. One time
some kids had put Vaseline on the earpiece. That was a fun time.

Now we have a phone in our pocket that we can talk to and have it do nearly
anything. By next year, it will have buttons when we want and no buttons when
we don't.

Vaseline on your ear is a bummer. This button-no-button stuff is _not_ a
bummer.

~~~
saulrh
It's a bit of a bummer because it's trivial and boring. It almost looks like
it's just a touchscreen with pockets on the front that you blow compressed air
into. The fact that this is getting so much attention - and the fact that it's
wasting some of our time in the process - is kind of annoying.

~~~
sanjiallblue
I feel like people like you complained when the first computers were invented
because they were slow. This is haptic technology progressing and just the
fact that it's getting major media attention is amazing since on-demand haptic
feedback is the biggest presence missing from digital technology. Touch is
just such a fundamental part of the human experience that anything that
advances the technology that gets us to that implementation should be
celebrated and here you are declaring it annoying?

It boggles the mind...

~~~
warfangle
Electrostatic haptic feedback looks much, much, much more promising. Toshiba
demo'd it two years ago:
[http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=j...](http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=jXITjLurof0)

~~~
kalleboo
That looks amazing, I wonder why it hasn't been commercialized yet. Too
expensive?

------
shahar2k
the way I see it, physical buttons have two uses one is tactile navigation:
the ability to find out what part of the screen you're touching and navigate
it without vision.

the second use though is activation feedback, a button has to be able to be
navigated separately from its activation. unless these protrusions can tell
whether they are pressed or not, it still seems useless to have a lumpy
touchscreen...

so I really hope they found some method of separating simply sliding a finger
around searching for a button and realizing when the finger is pressing
down... this is the exact same issue as the various touch-mice devices

(left click with finger on left side, right click with finger on right side,
unless that is you like to REST your fingers while clicking)

~~~
Artagra
From the site:

"While touchscreens provide a versatile user experience, they provide no
tactile experience for consumers. Vibration haptics and similar solutions try
to simulate a sensation of touch, but all are "feedback" technologies,
vibrating only after touching the screen (even if they are touched in the
wrong place or by mistake). In contrast, Tactus' technology creates real,
physical buttons, where users can rest their fingers on the buttons, as on a
mechanical keyboard, and input data by pressing down on the keys. Tactus is
the only solution to both "orientation" and "confirmation" problems that are
inherent in touch screens."

------
kyebosh
Braille. Can you imagine the world of potential here for our low-vision
friends? Dynamic text for signs (seen through something like Google's glass),
down to topographical layout of the ground in front of you for navigation...
This could really shake things up.

------
beedogs
Site hosted on Yahoo and instantly overloaded. This is like reading Slashdot
in 1998.

------
zacharypinter
Prediction: Apple buys the company and the proceeds to get every patent they
can on this tech.

~~~
jarek
Unfortunately for them that won't be a lot of patents that would stand up
under examination since there's been heavy research in haptic interfaces, and
especially haptic touchscreen interfaces for quite a while now.

In fact I would be surprised if Apple wasn't doing research into this
themselves.

~~~
Codhisattva
Apple filed a patent in March 2012 for a haptic touchsceen.
[http://www.appleinsider.com/articles/12/03/22/apples_haptic_...](http://www.appleinsider.com/articles/12/03/22/apples_haptic_touch_feedback_concept_uses_actuators_senses_force_on_iphone_ipad.html)

------
Palomides
I don't see any info on how it works? the website is just justifications for
tactile interaction

------
buq2
Here is very similar technology:
[http://www.chrisharrison.net/index.php/Research/PneumaticDis...](http://www.chrisharrison.net/index.php/Research/PneumaticDisplays)

Nokia has also done research into this but with little bit different
technology: [http://c2499022.cdn.cloudfiles.rackspacecloud.com/wp-
content...](http://c2499022.cdn.cloudfiles.rackspacecloud.com/wp-
content/uploads/2008/07/nokia-haptics.pdf)

------
ilaksh
Could you take little sections of this stuff, stack them together, and use
them as a sort of programmable matter type thing?

Maybe if you fold them over or something they could just basically expand and
contract. So you expand a bunch in one section to make a feature. Then wrap
the whole thing in a very flexible skin. Press a button on a computer, and it
morphs between (for example) an alligator shape and a person shape.

~~~
zf1234
Or it would be cool if you could make a ball shape with a solar power source
inside, and it could push itself around and collect energy. It could turn on
and off rows of "buttons" to give itself momentum.

Throw in a camera for object tracking; or a bright light - you could make
little glowing orbs that roll around, float in water etc.

Throw a bunch over a wall - they move around and map rooms as a swarm.

------
andrejewski
Very interesting and a bit scary. Think about it, a screen that can reach out
and change its shape. That almost guarantees some (software) application
misuse if they are given access to screen control. But on the other hand,
gaming would be more interesting with something more to interact with than
just what is displayed on screen.

It will be interesting to see what becomes of this.

~~~
solnyshok
I expect a rogue app, that, upon detecting that phone is laying with its
display down, starts to move the phone by imitating snake's muscles. and phone
runs for the exit and beyond!

~~~
moe
I'm afraid it may take a little longer before my phone can safely climb off a
table, much less those 5 flights of stairs before it reaches the street...

Still, the idea of a million smartphones collectively climbing out of their
nightstands at full moon and then crawling towards some supervillain's cave,
as fast as their little bubblescreens will carry, is definitely hollywood
material!

------
run4yourlives
This is cool, but is there really a demand for this? Didn't we almost
universally switch from textured, real buttons to glass interfaces over the
last 5 years?

Maybe it's just me, but I'm not exactly pining for my old blackberry's
keyboard. My display/interface iPhone isn't perfect, but this just isn't a
real enough problem for me. Is it for you?

~~~
DavidSJ
Glass is preferable because it can be reconfigured by software to fit the
application, allowing dead-simple, focused interfaces rather than bloated,
inflexible catch-all input devices.

The tradeoff was the loss of tactile feedback, meaning good luck dialing a
number, choosing a song, etc. while driving. Tactile glass would be the best
of both worlds.

~~~
koeselitz
And not just driving. Take the iPad, for instance - it's fun and kind of
magical, but a lot of us dismiss it because you can't really do "serious"
input on it. Even though I really like it, I have to confess that I can't
really type that fast, nor is typing comfortable enough to do for very long.
But if typing on my iPad were as easy as it is on a chiclet-type keyboard -
just a step or two down from my laptop keyboard - then suddenly things would
equalize a bit. And what is for many people _the_ major barrier to using a
touch device exclusively would disappear.

------
ajani
What is really exciting about this is that it could potentially be used as an
ad hoc surface generator. A basic idea would be to have physical keys on the
variety of piano apps available for iOS. An extreme example would be having
terrain pop up of the screen in games like "the bard's tale", providing
tactile knowledge of the game levels.

There isn't much information on the actual implementation on the website, but
if you could make the surface depress-able or not depending on the context
requirement, then the variety of applications is endless: Think of the blind,
being able to use tablets to read with Braille(non depress-able), or the piano
idea from above( depress-able).

------
Steko
Reminded me of this recent item:

[http://www.patentlyapple.com/patently-apple/2012/05/apple-
re...](http://www.patentlyapple.com/patently-apple/2012/05/apple-reveals-
wildly-intelligent-multi-tiered-haptics-system.html)

------
bking
It is funny to see this because a few years ago in college I mused with the
idea of using bubbles for buttons on screens and drew up some plans I had. I
didn't have the tech or the time to bring it about, but I am glad someone else
has. The issues I came up with was how to build a small pneumatic motor that
would fit in a device, not make much noise, work quick, and not drain all the
power fast. I hope they can do it becasue tactile feedback would be nice. =)

------
aangjie
Am I the only one thinking Heart of Gold(Hitchhiker's guide to the galaxiy)??
P.S: I couldn't really reach the page. just the description evokes that memory

------
waxjar
This would be handy to adjust the volume or pause the currently playing track
on your smartphone. It always kinda annoyed me that I had to take it out of my
pocket to do that.

It's a cool technology, but i think it won't be more useful or productive than
a regular touch screen. How are you gonna swipe on a bumpy touch screen?

------
altrego99
I have been thinking about this for a while - great to see someone company is
actually taking initiative to really build this! I think this will definitely
help to bridge the gap between buttoned and touch phones - will tremendously
improve your keyboard accuracy on a phone if nothing else.

------
ch0wn
A lot of the sub pages don't seem to have <title> elements. That seems like an
odd oversight.

------
samirahmed
Microsoft - a company that is making such a big push with touch in Windows 8
should be the most interested in this company.

Tactile touch has the ability to transform tablets from casual and convenience
devices to the next generation of computers and MS is already betting on
touch.

------
orblivion
Man, I knew this was coming. I just thought it would be like 5 years from now.

------
protolif
The website appears to be down. Who uses Yahoo for hosting?

------
rtrocc
It kills me how they synced the beats of the intro music to the "morphing" of
the buttons...

------
jachwe
why is everybody ranting on this nice technology and ignores the fact that the
sites image and css ressources aren't loading?!

