Kyocera presents a new Touch Feeling technology before – SME News

The protected virtual reality technology allows the feeling of a real keyboard – contact by the mechanical feedback of a display or user interface. This simulates pressing a mechanical button. For applications in the automotive industry to increase the driving safety is expected

Kyoto / Neuss -. The Japanese technology company Kyocera, a leading manufacturer of electronic equipment, represents in Europe a new patented technology for simulating a real key press on screens before. It is expected that this technology will create a new kind of Bedienoberfächen. It can be used in touch panels or touch pad in the automotive industry or for industrial and consumer applications.

Source: Kyocera Fine Ceramics GmbH

It is a known disadvantage of current touch input devices that the impression of a real key touch is imperfect due to a lack of mechanical feedback of the HMI. Errors occur, because it can be shown only visually whether a desired input has been registered or not. Kyocera is in its solution a specially developed virtual reality technology to mechanical buttons and Others to simulate on screens. Following the principles of virtual reality, the Pacinian nerve in this case stimulated in your fingers to create the impression of a real mechanical buttons pressure in the brain

The technical principle of this effect is as follows:. The sense of a “real” keystroke is simulated by combining different pressure sensations in the fingers. If the pushing in the virtual button a certain exceeded (by S / W to be set) trigger value of the pressure, then the touched surface is treated in a specific manner (frequency, waveform) in vibration, so that the second phase of the switching process is simulated.

This “Haptivity” technology from Kyocera simulated thereby on the nerves of the fingers the impression of operating a mechanical key (Pat. No. EP2461233B1, in effect until 2030).

The targeted combination of pressure detection and subsequent vibrational excitation of the surface creates the feeling of a normal button, a rubber button, an adjustment wheel or ring and much more to operate, which is going on the actual mechanical movement of the surface in contact only in the micrometer range. By appropriate programming of the device software various touch effects can be cause and controlled. This provides scope for creative designs of the HMI.

Kyocera uses this patented technology in the future in its products and is planning a program to grant licenses.

“Kyocera owns several patents for the new virtual- reality technology, which we call “Haptivity”. It stands for a controlled active sensing surface structures and movements, “explains Manfred Sauer, Managing Director of Kyocera Display Europe GmbH. The impressive prototypes have already guessed that soon many promising applications come to market, whose function is based on the combination of piezo elements, a proprietary ASIC and the new patented technology “.