Researchers from Carnegie Mellon University’s Future Interfaces Group (FIG) are taking another shot at solving these issues with a technology they’re calling Flat Panel Haptics, as detailed in a new paper But Carnegie Mellon’s flat panel haptics seems betterīut two researchers in the Future Interfaces Group (FIG) at Carnegie Mellon University have come up with what seems like a better approach, in the form of what they call flat panel haptics. The feeling is 100% convincing.īut feeling movement is only half the battle with keyboards: You can’t touch-type unless your fingers can feel the keys before you press them.Īpple has been working on this problem for many years, and a 2018 patent illustrates one potential solution – using an electrostatic charge to simulate the feeling of the edge of a key. Apple in particular has demonstrated just how convincing this feel can be: Its trackpads haven’t offered physical clicks for years, but you’d never guess that if you didn’t already know. The lack of movement is easily solved with haptics. The problem, of course, is that the lack of feel and movement makes a screen both awkward and uncomfortable to use for all but small volumes of text. Sonder e-ink keyboard, with most of the keys mappableĪnother is to replace a physical keyboard with a screen-based one, as on the iPhone and iPad. One form of dynamic keyboard retains physical keys, but uses e-ink or OLED keycaps to allow the function of the keys to be changed on demand. They offer far greater flexibility than conventional keyboards, enabling them to be customized for anything from typing in another language to video editing. The problem with screen-based keyboardsĭynamic keyboards – where the function of keys can change contextually, depending on the app you are using and what you are doing at the time – are likely the next major development. But there are numerous Apple patents to suggest that the company doesn’t plan to stop there. That was followed by the iPad, which offered something close to a normal-sized keyboard in virtual form. While the MacBook Pro‘s now-vintage Touch Bar may have been a misstep, it still seems likely that Apple’s long-term vision is to replace physical keyboards with touchscreen ones – and Carnegie Mellon University’s flat panel haptics could be a better bet than the approaches Apple has patented to date.Īpple’s first step in this lengthy journey was of course the iPhone, replacing the physical keyboards which were the norm on smartphones of the time with a screen-based virtual one …
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