SBIR Phase I: Haptic tactile display

这个项目的更广泛的影响/商业潜力包括为视障人士提供一种通过触觉理解信息的新手段。为了实现这一目标，该公司正在创造微型执行器和令人耳目一新的显示器，使盲人能够快速理解视觉信息。一个主要的潜在社会利益将直接与视障人士和盲人有关，他们在学习几何、代数和微积分以及其他视觉学科方面有明显的困难。触觉类比？设备旨在通过以快速刷新的触觉方式呈现形状/形状来帮助他们理解这些概念，帮助克服学习障碍。此外，商业上的成功将是生产和销售这种设备(针对不同的细分市场)。触觉类比公司预计，市场将有37%的美国盲人学生、90%的盲人教育中心、40%的博物馆和7%的盲人成年人将其用作工作工具。与夏普合作，触觉类比公司还将探索嵌入微阀的功能性数字显示器，市场将扩大，通过视觉和触觉手段为移动用户提供2感官数据输出的触觉体验。该公司预计，在投产5年后，收入将超过2亿美元。这个小型企业创新研究(SBIR)第一阶段项目正在解决这样一个问题，即视障人士不仅要学习，还要理解图像和视觉信息，这会影响他们的日常生活质量。目前制作一张钉好的打印页的成本约为每页20美元，准备和打印大约需要2周时间。触觉类比？设备将提供高达每秒30次的快速快速刷新速度，允许根据它们所代表的图像创建帧。这一解决方案将使盲人不再依赖于固定的纸张来理解图像或形状。一般来说，这是一种检索信息的触觉方式，技术上并不局限于盲人。这个机会与在不需要视力的地方提供一种新型的信息检索有关。我们的研究目标是克服我们成熟的微型阀技术的设计问题，触觉模拟公司将能够提供15厘米乘20厘米(2700个气动阀)面积的标准平板大小的显示器。此外，气室和信息转换执行器的操纵是另外两个需要克服的问题。预计的结果不仅是2700个气动微型阀的分配，甚至还包括更大的显示器。一旦这项技术得到验证，它将允许跨多个行业的各种应用，并有可能创造出许多商业上成功的产品线。

The broader impact/commercial potential of this project consists of providing a new means for visually impaired people to understand information via haptics. In order to accomplish this, the company is creating micro actuators and refreshing displays that will permit the blind to understand visual information quickly. One major potential societal benefit will be directly related to visually impaired people and blind, who have a marked difficulty in learning geometry, algebra and calculus, and other visual disciplines. Tactile Analogics? devices are intended to help them to understand such concepts by representing shapes/ forms in a fast-refreshing tactile way, helping to overcome that learning obstacle. Furthermore, the commercial success will be in producing and selling such devices (for different market sub-segments). Tactile Analogics expects market adoption of 37% of USA blind students, 90% of blind educational centers, 40% of museums, and 7% of blind adults to use it in as a working tool. In collaboration with Sharp, Tactile Analogics will explore also a functional digital display with micro-valves embedded, the market will widen to give haptics experience to mobile users in a 2-sense data outputs via sight and tactile means. The company expects to generate revenues of over $200m after year five of production. This Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase I project is attacking the problem that visually impaired people have to not just learn, but to understand images and visual information, with impacts on their quality of daily life. Current cost of producing a single pinned printed page is about $20 USD per page and takes about 2 weeks to prepare and print. Tactile Analogics? devices will offer a rapid fast-refreshing speed of up to 30 times per second, allowing the creation of frames according to the image that they are representing. This solution will enable blind to not depend on pinned paper to understand images or shapes. In general, this is a haptic way to retrieve information and technically not limited to blind people. The opportunity is related with providing a new type of information retrieval where sight is not needed. The research objectives are to overcome design problems of our proven technology of micro-valves, where Tactile Analogics would be able to offer a standard tablet-size display for an area of 15cm by 20cm (2700 pneumatic valves). Furthermore, the air chamber and the information conversion-actuator manipulation are two other problems to overcome. The anticipated results are the allocation of not just the 2700 pneumatic micro-valves, but also even for larger displays. Once the technology is proven, it will allow a variety of applications across multiple industries, with the possibility of creating many commercially successful product lines.