Shape-Changing Vehicle Touch Panel With Tactile Feedback
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Solution Overview
Problem
Capacitive touch panels in vehicle interiors face challenges in providing tactile feedback and visual indicators for users, as they often cannot see which part of the panel they are touching, especially when driving, and existing solutions compromise the visual feedback of capacitive touchscreens.
Innovation Solution
A vehicle interior panel with a shape-changing capacitive touch surface that includes debossed portions and a conductive layer made from fullerenes and carbon nanotubes, allowing the surface to change contour and maintain electrical continuity, providing both tactile and visual feedback while maintaining optical transparency.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Illumination intensity
If a capacitive touchscreen is used in a vehicle interior panel, then visual feedback is provided to the user, but tactile feedback is insufficient because the user cannot see which part of the panel they are touching
Solution Approach 1:
The control panel surface dynamically changes its contour to provide tactile feedback. When a control function is selected, the surface deforms to create a raised or depressed region at the corresponding touch location, giving the user tactile confirmation of their input while maintaining the visual display functionality of the capacitive touchscreen underneath.
2Ease of operation
If compressible buttons are added over a capacitive touchscreen to provide tactile feedback, then tactile feedback is improved, but visual feedback is compromised because the buttons hide the visual indicators
Solution Approach 1:
A flexible membrane with conductive traces is used as the control panel surface. This thin, transparent film can deform to provide tactile feedback while maintaining optical transparency, allowing the underlying capacitive touchscreen visual indicators to remain visible through the membrane even when the surface deforms.
3Ease of operation
If the control panel surface deforms to provide tactile feedback, then tactile feedback is improved, but maintaining electrical continuity across the deformable surface becomes difficult
Solution Approach 1:
The conductive traces in the flexible membrane are designed with varying geometric parameters - specifically, they include serpentine or meandering patterns with adjusted trace widths, spacing, and curvature radii. These parameter changes allow the conductive paths to accommodate surface deformation while maintaining electrical continuity, as the flexible geometry can stretch and bend without breaking the conductive connection.
Applied Scientific Principles
This section explains which scientific principles are used to turn an abstract innovation direction into a practical engineering solution.
Function Achieved in This Case
The solution enables a capacitive touch panel that offers both tactile and visual feedback, enhancing user interaction in vehicle interiors by providing a modern aesthetic and maintaining utility as a capacitive touch panel, while ensuring electrical continuity and optical transparency.
Implementation Method 1
Human or other conductive contact with a capacitive touchscreen changes capacitance or otherwise disrupts an electrical field along the screen
Implementation Method 2
a conductive layer made from fullerenes and carbon nanotubes, allowing the surface to change contour and maintain electrical continuity
Implementation Method 3
a conductive layer made from fullerenes and carbon nanotubes, allowing the surface to change contour and maintain electrical continuity
Data Source
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AI summary
A vehicle interior panel includes a capacitive touch panel with a control surface that can assume different contours. The capacitive touch panel includes a conductive layer beneath the control surface that is sufficiently flexible to maintain electrical continuity when the touch panel changes shape. The conductive layer can be formed from carbon nanobuds or other fullerenes to enable such flexibility, while also providing optical transparency. Pushers situated behind the touch panel extend and retract to stretch the touch panel and allow it to morph from one shape to another.