With the advent of the iPhone in 2007, the era of phones with touch keyboards began, and phones with classic QWERTY buttons had to disappear from the market irretrievably. Either with buttons under the display or in a retractable form. BlackBerry lasted the longest on the market, but today even this brand no longer exists on the market. However, even today, touch screens do not offer the same confidence when typing as on regular keyboards. The “inflatable” layer that is added under the display is supposed to change it.
It’s called “Flat Panel Haptics” and was created at Carnegie-Mellon University’s FIG (Future Interfaces Group) Institute. You can imagine it as a five-millimeter layer with a weight of 33 grams, the upper side of which looks like a trampled chewing gum. However, this side can be inflated in any place (or according to the matrix located below). And the swelling itself, the width of which can be from 2 to 10 millimeters, does not change even after touching it with a finger.
Inflatable layer and flexible OLED – when the display is turned off, take a visual look at how parts of the inflated keyboard protrude into the space. The only disadvantage of the current solution is that the inflatable zones are already fixed during production. They cannot change in any way
In practice, the principle of built-in electro-osmotic pumps is used, which can temporarily increase part of the area. If the layer gets under the display, when you touch the inflated part, together with the vibration response, you will get the impression that you are not pressing the display, but real buttons. According to the developers, the illusion should be perfect.
In the video below, you can see the details of the glued and pressure-pressed eleven-layer structure, which can display animations, structures or even shape-distinguishable buttons (play and stop). However, the most interesting use of this layer is its application under a flexible OLED display, which does not mind a little swelling at all. At the end of the video below, you can see how interactively the application icon can alert you to missed notifications, or how the layer can be used for “squeeze” buttons or a QWERTY keyboard.
Full technical details and samples of the “inflatable” display:
The technology is still very far from commercial deployment, because the dimensions and placement of the inflatable parts is not dynamic, but is determined directly from the factory. It would be enough to enlarge the keyboard or turn the phone on its side, and the fixed inflatable surface would be useless. We see it more as a promise for the future, if the appropriate development contributes to the fact that it will be possible to inflate any part of the display at any time, it will mean that you will feel like typing on the phone like on a physical keyboard. And that might appeal to a lot of users.
2023-04-27 13:26:20
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