haptics

The Korean electronics giant has signed a multiyear licensing agreement with Immersion for its haptics products, giving Samsung access to new technology for its various mobile devices.

Haptics technology is built into devices to create tactile feedback or vibrations so a user actually feels something when touching the screen of a mobile device. For example, Immersion software combined with "actuators," such as motors, allows sensations like the feel of a button click when pressing a virtual button. It makes the product feel more real and can improve the user experience, particularly … Read more

Princess Leia, eat your heart out.

If you need a little extra something in your struggle against the Galactic Empire, what better than this charming headdress? It's enough to stop a platoon of stormtroopers dead in its tracks.

But Blinklifier is no sci-fi film prop. It's the subject of research on feedback loops being presented at this month's 10th Asia Pacific Conference on Computer Human Interaction (APCHI 2012) in Matsue, Japan.

Tricia Flanagan of Hong Kong Baptist University and colleagues are proposing Blinklifier as a wearable computer that emphasizes the user's eye movements with a colorful … Read more

If you're driving around in a 2013 Ford Fusion and think to yourself, "My, but this seat is comfortable," there's a good chance you have RUTH the robot to thank.

Ford's Robotized Unit for Tactility and Haptics -- a modified consumer packaging arm that tests interiors for quality and comfort -- has crossed the Atlantic from Europe to bring her touchy-feely testing skills to North America.

The robot simulates human motor skills to measure parameters like roughness, hardness, and temperature on points such as the steering wheel, knobs, and armrests. RUTH has already been used for several years at the automaker's European Research Center in Aachen, Germany, to poke and prod European versions of the Focus and Fiesta.

RUTH 2.0, located at Ford's Product Development Center in Dearborn, Mich., measures seat comfort too. She has extended her six-jointed arm all over the seats of the 2013 Fusion, the first North American car headed to production that she's had a major hand (or arm, we should say) in testing. … Read more

Despite the late Steve Jobs' mockery of a stylus, Apple has been tinkering with the notion of an iPen complete with haptic feedback.

That's according to a newly published patent application unearthed by enthusiast site Patently Apple. Apple's idea for an iPen would include haptic feedback to improve the user interface.

Users would feel a small vibration depending on how much pressure they applied to the stylus, or whether the stylus moved over a link on the screen, creating a more realistic experience. It could also vary depending on the angle of the stylus, orientation to the screen, … Read more

Haptic technology allows users to "feel" buttons on a touch-screen device by providing localized feedback when users' fingers touch button or control areas. A patent application filed in late March showed Apple's version of haptic technology, a process that would use piezoelectric actuators under the display to provide feedback.

A new patent application, uncovered by Patently Apple, shows that Apple is taking its haptic inquiry a step further. Apple's new displays for touch-screen devices would be flexible, allowing for a layer of the screen to actually raise itself when a button or control area is available … Read more

Many of the last remaining BlackBerry holdouts continue to clamor about the advantages of a physical keyboard, citing the difficulty of using a touch-screen device if its user cannot see the display. According to one of Apple's latest patent applications, that argument may soon become moot.

The "Touch-based User Interface with Haptic Feedback" patent application, discovered by AppleInsider, highlights the use of actuators and sensors on an iPad's or iPhone's display that would allow a user to effectively feel buttons and other controls.

Apple's take on haptic technology places piezoelectric actuators under the display, … Read more

For the blind and visually impaired, it can be nearly impossible to follow along when a math teacher spends most of a lecture in front of a blackboard or projector drawing shapes, parabolas, X-Y planes, and other visuals.

It's about time there's an app for that, thought mechanical engineering grad student Jenna Gorlewicz, who'd spent a few years at Vanderbilt's Medical and Electromechanical Design Laboratory miniaturizing endoscopic robotic capsules and was looking for a more people-oriented project.

So Gorlewicz, who says she loves both teaching and math, set out 18 months ago to try to develop a tablet app that uses haptic (or tactile) technology to help the visually impaired learn math and other subjects with a strong visual component.… Read more

When you scroll around the iPad 2 with your finger, all you feel is a screen. But what if you had the chance to actually feel all the things you're seeing?

According to U.K. tech blog Pocket-lint, you might just have that chance with the new iPad 3. The blog reported today that it spoke with a company spokesman at haptic-feedback firm Senseg, who said that the firm "won't be making any statements until after Apple's announcement." It wasn't necessarily a smoking gun, but Pocket-lint believes that it was enough to suggest Senseg's technology will be coming to the iPad 3.… Read more

This week, the Crave crew uncovers a cupcake-dispensing ATM, hot-tub boats, and a sonic weapon that confounds your enemy into silence. Plus, a concept Xbox controller that massages your thumbs, merit badges for nerdlings, and a DARPA cheetah bot that will be chasing us in our nightmares.

Subscribe in iTunes SD Video | Subscribe in RSS SD Video … Read more