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A touchscreen that touches back

If you've ever held a video game controller that vibrated when you got fragged, you can probably thank Immersion for the experience - and now the company is turning its expertise in haptic technology to touchscreens that provide tactile feedback.

April 3, 2006 by James Bickers — Editor, Networld Alliance

For many self-service applications, touchscreens are the ideal hardware interface - they're durable, they're relatively inexpensive, and they allow GUIs to be infinitely customizable.

But until now, they have not been able to give the same experience that a "real-world" button or switch provides - the tactile, sensory experience that lets you know you have successfully made a choice.

Immersion Corp., a San Jose company, is trying to change that with its TouchSense system, which enables touchscreens to give off slight vibrations, simulating the effect of pushing a "real" button.

"Tactile response solves the problem of software latency, where the user is left waiting and wondering if their input actually registered," said Mike Levin, vice president and general manager with Immersion Corp. "Our system can provide a nearly instantaneous and unmistakable tactile response to the user."

Tactile-response touchscreens are one example of haptic technology, the science and physiology of the sense of touch. (See the sidebar for more details about the world of haptics.)

Not all fun-and-games

For the past several years, Immersion arguably has received as much attention for its David vs. Goliath courtroom battles as for its technology.

In 2000, Sony began shipping "Dual Shock" vibrating controllers with its popular PlayStation video game system - and Immersion executives believed those controllers infringed on several of their patents. Ditto with the controllers packaged with Microsoft's Xbox system.

In February 2002, Immersion filed suit against both companies; Microsoft settled in July 2003, but Sony put up a fight. After a five-week trial, a jury ruled that Sony had infringed upon two of Immersion's patents. In a March 2005 press release, Immersion announced it had been awarded $90.7 million in lost revenue and interest.

Immersion's technology - the company holds more than 500 issued or pending patents - can be found in a number of industries, from medicine to automotive to imaging. Entertainment products like gaming components are one small slice of its technology pie, and today the company is placing a great deal of emphasis on its tactile-feedback touchscreens.

"We've received interest from touchscreen intergrators and original equipment manufacturers serving the entertainment, financial, hospitality, industrial, medical, military, retail and transportation industries," Levin said. "We are probably receiving so much interest because, even though the touchscreen is the device of choice for so many applications, it can still be improved by restoring the connection and certainty of response that people like about mechanical controls."

So how does it work? A series of electromagnetic actuators sits between the touchscreen surface and the LCD display; when an on-screen object such as a button is touched, the host application tells a tactile feedback controller to play a specific vibro-tactile profile, called an "effect," through those actuators.

"This process is similar to a host application calling a sound file that will be played on a speaker," Levin said.

The actuator arrays themselves come in a variety of models, and Levin said it is possible to maintain a thin overall touchscreen depth. Since the actual movement of the actuators is just a few tenths of a millimeter, Levin said his company expects no "wear and tear" problems.

As for cost, he said the price to add tactile feedback to a touchscreen "is similar to that of the touchscreen (itself)."

Immersion is marketing the system under the brand TouchSense, which includes both hardware and software.

The potential benefits

One of the companies working with Immersion is StacoSwitch, a Costa Mesa, Calif. firm that is taking the TouchSense package and employing it for different applications in various industries.

Kevin Judd, vice president of marketing for StacoSwitch, said TouchSense makes touchscreens true replacements for conventional switch applications.

"One of the single greatest barriers to the full adoption of touchscreens in many applications has been the lack of positive feedback," he said. "Many of the military applications we work with require operators to multitask in high-stress situations, and the operators need the positive touch feedback to know they have completed the activation of a system or function without diverting their attention fully to a screen to watch for visual cues. Sound is also often not an option, since the environments are generally noisy or the operator is wearing a helmet which filters out the sound."

That same situation will hold true in many retail or gaming environments, where users might strain to hear the audio cues a conventional touchscreen is giving off.

If Immersion's efforts are successful, tactile-feedback touchscreens might one day become the standard rather than the exception.

"3M Touch Systems is currently working on production models that will be introduced to the casino gaming and bar-top amusement markets this year," Levin said. "Several automotive OEMs and their suppliers have extensively tested our technology, and Immersion has signed license agreements with the largest automaker in Europe, Volkswagen, and with SMK, the leading producer of touch panels for automotive systems."

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