Tactile Bump Display Suitable for Touch Panel using Electro-rheological Fluid

触摸屏现在被广泛应用于智能手机等。尽管由于用户界面设计的灵活性，它使设备具有高功能，但它幸运地向用户提供触觉反馈，导致错误的操作。因此，本研究开发了一种使用胶体电流变液的触觉凹凸显示器，适用于与触摸屏集成。电流变液是一种通过施加直流电压来改变流变性的功能流体，甚至可以从液体转变为固体。研制的触觉显示器主要由电极板、电流变液和绝缘膜组成。电极板具有3x3电极对矩阵，间隔15 mm。通过在电极对上施加直流电压，电流变液可以在相应的电极对周围变成固态。然后，当用户通过胶片触摸相应的区域时，可以感觉到物理碰撞。实验结果表明，通过凸块显示，大大提高了按键操作的准确性。

A touch panel is now widely used in smart phones etc. Although it enables the devices to have high functionalities due to the flexibility of user interface design, it lucks tactile feedback to the users which causes wrong operations. Hence, this study developed a tactile bump display, suitable for integration with touch panels, using colloidal ER fluid. The ER fluid is a kind of functional fluid which changes rheological characteristics, even from liquid to solid, by applying DC voltage. The developed tactile display is mainly composed of an electrode board, ER fluid and an insulative film. The electrode board has 3x3 electrode pair matrix with 15 mm intervals. By applying DC voltage to an electrode pair, the ER fluid may become solid state at around the corresponding electrode pair. Then, a user can feel a physical bump when touching the corresponding area via the film. As a result of experiment, the accuracy of button pushing operation is greatly improved with the bump display.