ChemistryEquipment: ViviTouch haptic technology hands-on: electroactive polymer giving a 'high definition feel'

Sunday, September 18, 2011

ViviTouch haptic technology hands-on: electroactive polymer giving a 'high definition feel'

Haptic feedback isn't exactly something that'd blow people's mind these days, with most mobile devices and gaming controllers already packing a little vibrator to spice up one's gaming experience. While these motors do the job just fine for delivering the sensation of large engines and explosions, their monotonic performance and relatively high minimum output threshold means they can't reproduce finer vibration. For instance, you wouldn't be able to feel a guitar string fade away after a strum, nor would you feel the finer end of a spring recoil. This is where Bayer MaterialScience's ViviTouch -- previously dubbed Reflex -- tries to fill the void.

For those who aren't familiar, the magic behind ViviTouch is its electroactive polymer (or EAP in short) -- imagine a thin sheet that consists of two electrode layers sandwiching a dielectric elastomer film, and when a voltage is applied, the two attracting electrodes compress the entire sheet. This slim, low-powered ViviTouch actuator module can be placed underneath an inertial mass (usually a battery) on a tray, thus amplifying the haptic feedback produced by the host device's audio signal between 50Hz and 300Hz (with a 5ms response time).

Gallery: ViviTouch haptic technology hands-on