Tactus Creates Touchscreen Keys You Can Feel
THE MILLIMETER-THIN OVERLAY USES MICROFLUIDICS TO GIVE YOU A SENSE OF POSITION ON YOUR IPAD OR IPHONE KEYBOARD … LEAVING LITTLE LEFT TO LOVE ABOUT YOUR BLACKBERRY.
Touchscreens are attention hogs–you’ve simply got to look at them each time you want to type a letter. So the folks at Tactus Technology came up with a tactile layer that lets real physical buttons morph out of a transparent touchscreen surface when needed, to disappear back into the screen when done.
The idea of a deformable touchscreen surface came to Craig Ciesla, CEO of Tactus, way back in 2007, when he found himself using his BlackBerry instead of the newly released iPhone because of its keyboard. That set him thinking as to whether it might be possible to somehow marry a physical tactile surface with a flat touchscreen. Could you have any type of keyboard or interface you wanted rise and fall out of a touchscreen on-demand, to get the best of both worlds?