Haptics is the science of touch. And with the significant movement to more touchscreens in phones, laptops, netbooks, and tablets, it’s going to play a much larger role than it has in the past. By using haptics with its vibrating feedback, users get a more natural feeling to button clicks and touch motions. The result is an overall better user experience with games, handsets, and tablets.

Article Tools

• 

Haptics kicks in when you touch the screen. Software running on an embedded controller senses that input. Then, the haptics software outputs signals to a special eccentric rotating motor that produces a unique vibration related to the touched item. The user gets appropriate touch feedback that is inherently lacking in all touchscreens.

Because haptics is such a special field, implementing it is not something designers want to face. Now, Immersion Corp. is making haptics easier to include in a design. Its TouchSense 2500 solution comprises all the needed software and a reference design that facilitates haptics inclusion.

TouchSense 2500 enables haptic effects that enhance the user experience in touch-based PCs, slates, tablets, netbooks, notebooks, ultra-portables, and all-in-one computers. As momentum for touch input increases, haptics can provide a tactile response, making interactions more intuitive, satisfying, and exciting by restoring a “mechanical” feel to screens.

The solution supports integrated and advanced user interfaces (UIs) and touch gesture-based interactions. It may be integrated to generate a variety of effects from simple alerts to sophisticated touch gestures in touch pads, capacitive buttons, touchscreens, and virtual keyboards. Also, it includes product-specific reference designs and a haptics effects library. TouchSense 2500 supports both Windows and Android operating systems as well. Key features include:

• Cost-effective haptic effects to improve the user experience
• A drop-in haptic processor from leading IC manufacturers, with porting available for custom processors
• Product-specific reference designs that simplify the implementation of haptic effects that are suited to the device
• A streamlined haptic effects library that allows designers to readily select haptic effects through a single command application programming interface (API) designed for a wide range of UI elements including touchscreens, touch gestures, and capacitive buttons
• UI integration with capacitive buttons, alerts, touchscreens, and touch gesture-like tap, double-tap, swipe, spread, pinch, slide/drag, and long press
• I/O interfaces including I2C and USB
• Operating-system (OS) support including Android and Windows 7
• Low power consumption, minimizing the drain on battery life

The Toshiba libretto W100 is the world’s first dual-touchscreen Windows mini-notebook PC. This ultra-portable features two multi-touch screens that can work independently or together, giving users flexibility in how to use them. Its UI design includes six virtual keyboard modes and a virtual touch pad leveraging Immersion’s haptics to provide touch feedback when keys are selected, making typing fast, accurate, and easy. The libretto W100 is currently available in selected countries.

Now available, TouchSense 2500 is being brought to market as off-the-shelf haptic processors from Immersion’s chip partners. It may also be ported to a device manufacturer’s specific chip to add haptics to its solution. Toshiba’s innovative libretto w100 is the company’s first product to incorporate Immersion’s technology (see the figure).

Immersion Corp.