10th January 2013

Tactus morphing touchscreen keyboard

At the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas, a company called Tactus has been demonstrating the world's first fully-integrated dynamic touchscreen tablet.

This 7" device showcases the company's tactile touchscreen technology and introduces an entirely new category of product made possible through its Tactus Morphing Tactile™ surface.

By enhancing both function and usability with Tactus, it is now possible to merge the essential capabilities of smartphones, tablets and laptops through a true physical interface. In a world of flat, static devices, Tactus aims to bring new life to touchscreens by enabling real, physical buttons that rise up from a screen's surface on demand, then disappear back into the screen, leaving a flat, transparent surface when no longer needed.

With normal touchscreens, input errors increase and typing speed decreases for most users. It can also be difficult to know when a "button" was pushed on a completely flat screen, plus there are no orientation cues to guide fingers to the right location. Tactus can solve this problem.

An earlier prototype was seen at last year's Society for Information Display (SID) conference. Since then, a number of design improvements have been made – which include a new coating material to reduce glare, a reduction in the controller's size by 70 percent and a doubling of the speed at which the keyboard activates.

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