Interactive Display With Tactile Feedback Keys
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Solution Overview
Problem
Interactive displays for electronic devices lack tactile feedback, making it difficult for users to locate keys, especially in touchscreen environments where physical keypads are absent or not easily accessible.
Innovation Solution
An electronic device with an interactive display that switches between interactive and non-interactive modes, featuring a substantially transparent keypad with physical keys that provide tactile feedback through actuators, allowing users to feel the location of imaged keys, and utilizing piezoelectric or magnetostrictive materials for dynamic key protrusion or indentation.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Shape
If a touchscreen display is used to replace physical keypads, then the device has a sleeker design and better durability, but users lose tactile feedback and difficulty locating keys
Solution Approach 1:
The display surface dynamically changes from a smooth non-interactive state to a tactile interactive state by raising physical key structures from the display surface. This dynamic transformation allows the same surface to provide both seamless appearance and tactile feedback based on operational mode.
Solution Approach 2:
Physical key structures serve as intermediary elements between the user's finger and the touchscreen display. These keys are permanently formed within the display and can be actuated to provide tactile feedback, mediating the interaction between user and display.
2Ease of operation
If physical keys are permanently formed within the display, then tactile feedback is provided, but the display cannot be fully utilized for other purposes
Solution Approach 1:
The display transitions between interactive and non-interactive modes, dynamically adjusting the physical key structures. In non-interactive mode, the keys are recessed or invisible, allowing full display utilization. In interactive mode, the keys protrude to provide tactile feedback.
Solution Approach 2:
The display structure serves multiple functions: it acts as both a visual display and a tactile input interface. The same physical structure provides both the display surface and the tactile keys, eliminating the need for separate physical keypad hardware.
3Measurement precision
If actuators are added to provide tactile feedback, then key location accuracy improves, but device complexity increases
Solution Approach 1:
The actuator mechanisms are merged with the display structure itself. The physical keys are permanently formed within the display, combining the tactile feedback mechanism with the display hardware rather than adding separate external components.
Solution Approach 2:
The display structure itself provides the tactile feedback function through its own physical key formations. The system uses its existing structural elements to provide the additional function of tactile feedback, reducing the need for entirely separate actuator systems.
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
Enhances user interaction by providing tactile feedback in interactive mode, improving key location accuracy and usability across various electronic devices like PDAs, cell phones, and ATMs, while maintaining a seamless interface in non-interactive modes.
Implementation Method 1
The physical keypad comprises piezoelectric material
Implementation Method 2
the physical keypad is made of a magnetostrictive material
Data Source
AI summary
An electronic device including an interactive display having a first mode and a second mode. The interactive display includes an image display device that displays a first user-interactive imaged keypad when the interactive display is in the first mode, and that displays a second user-interactive imaged keypad when the interactive display is in the second mode, and a substantially transparent keypad including physical keys permanently formed within the display so that the keypad provides tactile feedback to a user indicating location of keys within the first and second imaged keypads.