Article

Digital signage screens deliver touch feedback, without the touch

Gesture interaction with digital signage may be set to take another leap forward.

November 12, 2013

Interactive digital signage may soon deliver the sensation of touch and feel to viewers — without the need for actual touch.

While Disney researchers have developed a touchscreen that fools the senses of people touching the screen to make it seem as though they can actually feel the objects on screen when they touch a display, U.K.-based researchers have taken one step further into the realm of force fields and science fiction.

Researchers from the University of Bristol Interaction and Graphics group in the U.K. have developed what is essentially a force field that allows for haptic feedback with interactive technology — without a user actually touching the screen.

The system is called UltraHaptics and it relies on the principal of acoustic radiation to project sensations through a screen directly onto the user's hands in mid-air.

The use of ultrasonic vibrations is a new technique for delivering tactile sensations to the user, according to a news release. An array of tiny speakers called ultrasonic transducers emit very high frequency sound waves. When all of the sound waves meet at the same location at the same time, they create sensations on a person's skin.

Tom Carter, a Ph.D. student in the university department of computer science's BIG research group, said the goal of the project was to integrate haptic feedback into interactive surfaces without sacrificing simplicity and accessibility.

"To achieve this, we have designed a system with an ultrasound transducer array positioned beneath an acoustically transparent display," Carter said. "This arrangement allows the projection of focused ultrasound through the interactive surface and directly onto the users' bare hands. By creating multiple simultaneous feedback points, and giving them individual tactile properties, users can receive localized feedback associated to their actions."

The technology is still in its infancy, but researchers are developing ideas for future applications, including mid-air gestures and layers of tactile information hovering over displays.

Watch a video explaining the technology below:

Learn more about interactive digital signage.