"Revolutionary OLED Touchscreen with Liquid-Filled Tactile Buttons"
Researchers at Carnegie Mellon University's Future Interfaces Group have developed a display that can create protrusions on demand by inflating and deflating screen sections with fluid. The "Flat Panel Haptics" technology can be stacked under an OLED panel to create pop-up buttons, adding a new tactile dimension to activities like typing and gaming. The Embedded Electroosmotic Pumps (EEOPs) are arrays of fluid pumps on a thin actuation layer built into a touchscreen device, and filling each area takes about one second. The researchers see this as a tactile equivalent to the way pixels work on displays, and it could open new doors for user interaction and accessibility features.