HASAMé

Our daily lives have seen the emergence of the touchscreen, as an economical input device. Physical knobs, buttons or keyboards have been replaced by input mechanisms displayed on touch screens. However, these mechanisms don't provide the tactile sensations of physical controls, creating the risk of increased demands on visual attention and, consequently, several disadvantages. For example, they can complicate life for the visually impaired or elderly, and can pose serious safety issues in automotive applications.

These drawbacks are slowing down the penetration of touchscreens into products. But introducing more haptic feedback into interaction is a promising way of dealing with these problems. What's more, recent years have seen the emergence of technologies that adopt other materials - such as wood, leather or textiles - to become haptic surfaces, i.e. surfaces that can change the way they are perceived by users. This has led the automotive industry to propose intelligent surfaces in their concept cars, whose rendering can be parameterized by software and modified over time to introduce digital functions directly into decorative surfaces. However, the vision existed, but not the enabling technology.

This societal and industrial context legitimizes a huge interest in outperforming existing haptic feedback solutions, in order to act as a catalyst and thus enable products that are more inclusive (for the visually impaired and elderly), smarter and safer (for the automotive industry, for example) and more interactive. The HASAMé project will address haptic feedback on different surfaces: OLED screens, since this technology is expected to account for over 80% of the smartphone screen market share by 2026, and other non-transparent surfaces with complex 3D geometries, and which can be used in automotive applications.

Three challenges have been identified to this end:

• Challenge 1: HASAMé will design new interaction techniques based on the use of tactile feedback that mixes texture simulations with button clicks.
• Challenge 2: HASAMé will design back layers on surfaces that can modify its ultrasonic behavior to meet the needs of the application.
• Challenge 3: HASAMé will develop a locally resonant programmable meta-material to ensure haptic device versatility, stimulation robustness and key variable detection.