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<font size=3>Cheryl,<br>
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.<br>
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. <br>
The testing the researchers did with a four character prototype showed
that it could only be read very slowly.<br>
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.<br>
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.<br>
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.<br>
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.<br>
Cordially,<br>
Noel<br>
-<br>
Noel H. Runyan<br>
Email: Noel@PersonalDataSystems.com<br>
Phone: 1-408-866-7564<br>
-<br>
At 08:12 AM 6/17/2020, Cheryl Fogle-Hatch via TAGS wrote:<br>
<blockquote type=cite class=cite cite="">Hello everyone,<br><br>
I'm passing along this link to an article about a hands-free braille<br>
display being developed in Germany. Somehow it converts braille dots<br>
into sounds. There is a pdf to download.<br><br>
<a href="https://hackaday.com/2020/06/07/hands-free-haptic-braille-display-is-making-waves/" eudora="autourl">
https://hackaday.com/2020/06/07/hands-free-haptic-braille-display-is-making-waves/</a>
<br><br>
Happy reading. :)<br><br>
-- <br>
Cheryl Fogle-Hatch, Ph.D.<br>
Archaeologist and Museum Professional<br>
(443) 939-8217<br>
c.k.fogle@gmail.com<br>
<a href="https://museumsenses.org/" eudora="autourl">
https://museumsenses.org</a><br>
<a href="https://www.linkedin.com/pub/cheryl-fogle-hatch" eudora="autourl">
https://www.linkedin.com/pub/cheryl-fogle-hatch</a><br><br>
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