Paper Reading #27 - TeslaTouch

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References:
Title: TeslaTouch, Electrovibration for Touch Surfaces
Authors: Olivier Bau, Ivan Poupyrev, Ali Israr, Chris Harrison
Venue: UIST '10, Oct. 3-6 2010.

Summary:
In this paper, the authors describe a method of generating tactile feedback on touch screens using only electricity. This technology, which requires no moving parts, can generate very realistic touch sensations when the user moves their hand across the touch screen.

The authors first describe how the technology works and what they used to test the technology. TeslaTouch works by using the position-sensing driver to send electrical signals across an insulating coating on the surface. As the finger moves across the surface, an attractive force is generated that feels like friction to the user. To test the technology, the authors placed the coating on a 3M multitouch table, shown above.

They then test how people react to the tactile feedback generated by the technology. They found that they were able to generate a variety of feelings in the users by slightly changing the frequency of the electrical signals. They also found that users can feel this feedback at the same level as normal vibration technology.

They then describe why this technology is better than current haptic vibration interfaces. Some of the reasons they cite are that: it's silent, it can uniformly generate touch over the entire surface and it has no mechanical motion. However, traditional haptic vibration can generate stronger feelings than this system.

Discussion:
I am really excited by the prospect of this technology. I have thought for years that touch screens need better touch feedback to truly work as well as traditional inputs, especially when doing similar tasks like keyboarding. I really want to try this system myself, because it apparently generates very real touch experiences.

I have two main concerns with this system, however. For multitouch surfaces, I am curious whether TeslaTouch can generate two different tactile sensations at once. If it can't, it's not a big deal, but it could decrease the realistic feel of the screen. Second, in the pictures above, you can see that the image appears to be slightly blurry. If the resistive layer causes the image to be less sharp, then in order for this technology to be practical they need to find a better coating.

(Image courtesy of: )