Tactus Technology Tactile Touchscreen | CES 2013 | WIRED

Not sure I understand the downvotes with no comment...? Maybe a video is more convincing... [VIDEO] Or this from BMW.... [LINK] Or Ultrahaptics... [LINK]

Yes you are right, my definition of "touch typing" was incomplete because it didn't mention the tactile element. There have been some prototypes where the screen has a surface that can produce "bumps" in response to electrical impulse, which could lead to having on-screen keyboards with some sort of tactile feel[1], however this is not available on the consumer market just yet. [1] [VIDEO]

I kind of think we'll eventually have tactile touchscreens eventually. Like folding phones, but the technology extrapolated 20 years from now. EDIT: Here's a proof of concept from 8 years ago. I think this would be nice to have on my Tesla. Best of both worlds: [VIDEO]

There was a company (Tactus Technology - now defunct) that had a "morphing" touch screen wherein the surface of the screen could be raised up to provide tactile feedback about "where" your fingers are on the screen (e.g. 'raised' keys for a keyboard [0]). I recall this being "the next big thing" in touch screens about 10 years ago but the tech didn't seem to go anywhere. For small screens such as your phone it was probably overkill but cars seemed like the perfect use case if they could have gotten the technology right. [0] [VIDEO]

I love how "science fair" this writeup is. Personally, I would have looked at more options before going for the (rather large) motorized wheel route. Two that come to mind are reusing the ball-type powered typewriters from the 80s/90s since the balls had embossed letters and high-precision positioning already. A second is microfluidic displays, which cellphone makers toyed with for on-screen keyboard tactile feedback back in the early 2010s. And indeed a quick search shows that a University of Michigan team used exactly that for a braille display 8 years ago [1] and it's spinning out into a company now. The company that was working on this for "pop-up" touchscreens 10 years ago was Tactus [2]. On the electromechanical side, it looks like there's an open source movement already with some interesting results so far [3]. [1] [LINK] [2] [VIDEO] [3] [LINK]