What You Should Know About Haptic (Touch) Technology
Haptic technology (Haptic, from the word ἁφή or Haphe) is a generalized term to refer to the many different technologies available today that use touch as a means of transmitting information as input to a system. This graphic here demonstrates a simple form of that, using touch to press a button computerized onto the screen and able to be touched through a touch-sensitive screen, that also simulates the sensation of truly touching. That’s one of the usages of haptic touch, but there’s a lot more one can do with it. In the traditional term, we’d like to refer to game controllers/joysticks with vibration as a simple form of it, especially those game consoles with new force-feedback technology that approach realism more and more each day, such as the sensation of a road on some racing games. Some new telephones are coming out with the technology too, where they developed a new type of vibration technology where an electromagnetic current that varies is sent through and a small metal weight moves up and down at different rates depending on usage (instead of having to rotate an off-center weight to make the sensation of vibration). With that, you can even create the sensation of a button with those touch-screen mobile phones.
Here’s a video demonstrating these technologies in different forms:
A "haptic" pen"
Haptic feedback using magnets:
And finally, a haptic radar device to detect stimuli before touching (I personally found this one pretty silly):
