Artificial Muscle to provide touchscreen with keyboard-style feel

While the world is shifting loyalties from buttoned phones to touchscreen phones, there still remains a major community of cellphone users who wouldn’t give up on their QWERTY keypad buttoned phones for anything. With a vision to provide touchscreens with the same keyboard style touch, a Sunnyvale-based Artificial Muscle has developed an Electroactive Polymer Artificial Muscle which helps provide keyboard-style feel even on glass screens by raising and lowering of the touchscreen surface when current is applied to it. To be released around this Christmas, the Muscle stiffens the entire screen (not just the area touched) when pressed, which simulates the feel of a button. Besides its usage in phones, the Artificial Muscle could also be used in gaming etc, where the EPAM with vibration can simulate gunfire, roll of a dice etc.

epam touchscreen

Via: MercuryNews