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

触摸面板现在被广泛用于智能电话等。虽然由于用户界面设计的灵活性，它使设备具有高功能性，但它会给用户带来触觉反馈，从而导致错误操作。因此，本研究开发了一种触觉凹凸显示器，适合与触摸面板集成，使用胶体ER流体。电流变液是一种通过施加直流电压改变流变特性，甚至由液态变为固态的功能流体。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，间距为15 mm。通过向电极对施加DC电压，ER流体可以在相应的电极对周围变成固态。然后，用户可以在经由膜触摸相应区域时感觉到物理碰撞。实验结果表明，凹凸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.