Description du projet
Un nouveau mécanisme pour des écrans tactiles graphiques de grande taille
L’Organisation mondiale de la Santé recense quelque 300 millions de personnes malvoyantes dans le monde. Pourtant, au cours des dernières décennies, les avancées ont été limitées dans le domaine des écrans tactiles qui permettent de traduire les textes et de transformer les graphiques en pixels palpables. Le projet Consolidator du CER entend développer la technologie des réseaux de micro-actionneurs avec un tout nouveau concept appelé Capillary Lock Actuator (CaLA). CaLA représentera une avancée considérable dans ce domaine, facilitant une large gamme d’applications dans la technologie des microsystèmes. Plus important, il marquera une étape significative pour rendre la technologie de l’information accessible à toutes les personnes malvoyantes, apportant une solution rentable aux écrans tactiles de grande taille.
Objectif
According to the World Health Organization more than 285 million people worldwide are visually impaired. In a world where graphics and online content (images, webpages) become increasingly important the inability to perceive information visually is the primary inhibitor for inclusion. In contrast to display technology for sighted people, tactile displays which translate text and graphics to touchable pixels (taxels) have seen little progress in recent decades. So-called Braille lines which display only a single line of text are still the norm. The reason why graphical tactile displays do not exist is the lack of a suitable actuator technology which allows generating massively parallelized individually addressable cost-effective taxel arrays.
This ERC Consolidator project aims at a revolution in microactuator array technology with a fundamentally new concept termed the Capillary Lock Actuator (CaLA). CaLA is a novel bistable massively parallelizable microfluidic microactuator which overcomes many of the limitations currently associated with microactuators. It can be operated with low-voltage control signals and requires virtually no power for actuation. CaLA harnesses three concepts inherent to microfluidics: positive capillary pressure, segmented flow and controllable locally confined changes in wetting. The project will use CaLA actuator arrays for setting up the very first portable tactile graphic display with 30.000 individually addressable taxels thereby significantly outperforming the state-of-the-art. It will be based on manufacturing techniques for highly complex microstructures in glass invented by my group.
CaLA will be a significant breakthrough in actuator technology and enabling for many applications in microsystem technology. Most importantly, it will be a significant step towards making the information technology inclusive for the visually impaired by providing the first robust cost-effective solution to large-scale tactile displays.
Champ scientifique
Mots‑clés
Programme(s)
Régime de financement
ERC-COG - Consolidator GrantInstitution d’accueil
79098 Freiburg
Allemagne