Tactus Technology has been showing off more of its morphing touchscreen technology at CES 2013. This time the company brought along a 7-inch Android based tablet, showing how a physical keyboard can be made to appear on the screen to aid users typing. But as we can’t all be there to get our hands on the device, Tactus has also released a new video to show off its interesting technology.
We had our first look at the Tactus Morphing Tactile display in another video last June, which walked us through the ideas behind the morphing touchscreen. The new video shows us what we can expect to see when using the morphing display in real world scenarios.
Watching the keys rise out of the screen is pretty damn cool, it seems like something out of a science fiction film, but it has practical merits too. The raised key positions should help solve the occasional problem of miss-clicking when typing, as well as making it feel more familiar to using a traditional keyboard.
If you’re interested in how this technology works, you should know that the morphing touchscreen contains tiny pockets of fluid under the screen. These pockets can be inflated by increasing the pressure of the fluid. As the pressure increases, the fluid pushes up against the screen, causing it to rise in pre-designated places.
As well as keyboards and phone dialling buttons, the Tactus display could also be used to add gamepad controls to tablets. The developers are trying to work on a way to create a more flexible touchscreen, which would allow different applications to morph the screen according to their own needs.
Tactus hasn’t commented on which future devices we will see utilizing the morphing touchscreen display, but the company is expecting mass production to begin at the end of 2013 or at the start of 2014. Would you be interested in owning a phone or tablet with a morphing display?
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