[TAGS] hands-free haptic braille display

[Noel Runyan]

Cheryl,
Thanks for sharing this news bit.  I've read the researchers' full 
report and have discussed the technology with Deane Blazie and others 
in the tactile display development field.  Our general consensus is 
that, unfortunately, braille readers should not be getting their 
hopes up much for this as a braille reading technology.
It is clearly not a "hands free" braille display.  You do wave your 
hand in the air over the unit, in order to feel the tactile 
sensations on your open palm.  It uses arrays of ultrasonic sound 
emitters to focus sounds on an area about a hand span above the 
surface.  The tactile sensations are said to feel something like 
light puffs of air on your palm.  Because of the low resolution of 
the system, you don't feel the tactile "dots" as braille on your 
fingertip; rather as braille cells the size of your palm.
The testing the researchers did with a four character prototype 
showed that it could only be read very slowly.
Their might be a few very limited applications for such a display, 
such as a time-of-day clock or other application in which you might 
need to read only a few characters.
Ultrasonic haptic tactile displays have, in the past, shown some 
promise as a method for presenting 2D and 3D tactile images.  Tactile 
graphic images applications seem to be much more likely than acoustic 
braille text displays.
The ultrasonic transducer arrays used by these researchers for 
presenting a "magic floating line of braille" use ultrasonic 
transducer arrays that have been developed for gamer virtual reality 
display systems.
Although I don't hold out hope for ultrasonic tactile displays for 
braille display uses, I'd still like to get an opportunity to 
actually feel a good ultrasonic tactile image system.
Cordially,
Noel
-
Noel H. Runyan
Email: Noel at PersonalDataSystems.com
Phone: 1-408-866-7564
-
At 08:12 AM 6/17/2020, Cheryl Fogle-Hatch via TAGS wrote:
>Hello everyone,
>
>I'm passing along this link to an article about a hands-free braille
>display being developed in Germany. Somehow it converts braille dots
>into sounds. There is a pdf to download.
>
>https://hackaday.com/2020/06/07/hands-free-haptic-braille-display-is-making-waves/
>
>Happy reading. :)
>
>--
>Cheryl Fogle-Hatch, Ph.D.
>Archaeologist and Museum Professional
>(443) 939-8217
>c.k.fogle at gmail.com
>https://museumsenses.org
>https://www.linkedin.com/pub/cheryl-fogle-hatch
>
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