>Relatedly, does anyone have a sense of how far out we are from consumer-grade haptic-feedback touchscreens?
Well, they had them in Star Trek: The Next Generation. While not actually shown close-up in the show, the technical manual explained that the flat touchscreens actually provided tactile feedback, and of course were reconfigurable.
How'd they do it? Simple: according to the technical manual, they used miniature force fields.
We're not very close to developing any kind of force fields right now....
On a more serious note, I believe there's been some research into using ultrasonics to provide some kind of tactile feedback. And of course lots of phones now have vibrating feedback.
Well, they had them in Star Trek: The Next Generation. While not actually shown close-up in the show, the technical manual explained that the flat touchscreens actually provided tactile feedback, and of course were reconfigurable.
How'd they do it? Simple: according to the technical manual, they used miniature force fields.
We're not very close to developing any kind of force fields right now....
On a more serious note, I believe there's been some research into using ultrasonics to provide some kind of tactile feedback. And of course lots of phones now have vibrating feedback.