The next generation touch interface

Beyond the fact that technology continuously grows beyond our imagination, we see that every year  the electronic producers try to exceed consumer expectations and probably their own.




Therefor a technology that drawn my attention was  Tactus : "What if buttons could morph out of the surface of your device?"


           Tactus Technology consists in dynamic buttons that appear and disappear as needed. The company calls this technology "morphing tactile surface". In other words there are real physical buttons that grow on the screen when you're typing and disappear when there is no tactile interaction.


          The company has this technology running on an Android-based tablet, but it's not yet tied to any particular operating system.

How does it work ?

          A Tactus touchscreen device stores a small amount of fluid in a reservoir inside the phone or tablet. When the system call for buttons on the screen, a tiny amount of fluid flows into specified areas on the screen forming a QWERTY keyboard or a numeric keypad.





A risk in this particular technology might be the leak of fluid into the battery compartment.
Another question might be if this technology isn't a little too late for the market, taking in consideration that physical keyboards are no longer popular among smartphones, and also the cost that imply this technology.

The technology has built-in capability for multiple arrays, so that the manufacturers could enable dynamic switching between keyboard styles and it was tested for durability, passing all the tests with good grades.

Craig Ciesla ( Tactus chief executive) says: " We're planning to be in production by the end of this year". " We're working with customers on an exact launch date."

Here is the presentation video for this new technology :

Reference : Consumer Electronics Show 2013 in Las Vegas