New 3D touch technology brings digital shapes to life

In a remarkable breakthrough, researchers at UC Santa Barbara have successfully invented a groundbreaking display technology that makes on-screen graphics both visible and haptic, meaning they can be felt via touch. 

These innovative screens are patterned with tiny pixels that physically expand outward when illuminated, creating dynamic bumps. 

This advance technology allows for the display of graphical animations that can be simultaneously seen with the eyes and felt with the hand, potentially leading to high-definition visual-haptic touchscreens for applications in automobiles, mobile computing, or smart architectural walls.

The research was led by Max Linnander, a Ph.D. candidate in the RE Touch Lab of mechanical engineering professor Yon Visell, and published in the journal Science Robotics. 

The core challenge proposed to Linnander was deceptively simple: Could the light that forms an image be converted into something that can be felt? 

The research team spent nearly a year on theoretical analysis and computer simulations before developing prototypes.

Linnander presented Visell with a simple, functional prototype, a single pixel excited by brief light flashes from a small diode laser. 

Visell recalled placing his finger on the pixel and feeling a clear tactile pulse with each flash of light. 

This confirmed the feasibility of the core idea. The technology relies on thin display surfaces integrating arrays of millimeter-sized optotactile pixels, which are individually controlled by projected light from the low-power laser through a process of optical addressing.