The near ubiquity of touchscreen inputs for mobile devices means that haptic feedback technologies are increasingly important. Various means of delivering such tactile feedback in mobile and portable devices will be discussed, and a recently developed Electrostatic Tactile (ET) feedback system providing programmable tactile feedback to mobile displays will be described. The ET system is a robust, thin, and optically transparent structure integrated on top of the display, and exploits the well-known phenomenon of electrovibration to create a controllable frictional force between a user’s fingertip and the surface. Localized tactile information is delivered to the user’s skin directly and the magnitude and pattern of the frictional force experienced is correlated with displayed images and the touch location. A variety of different materials have been demonstrated, including those compatible with flexible devices, such as the Nokia Kinetic Device.

Piers Andrew

Piers Andrew joined Nokia Research Center (NRC) in 2007 and since 2008 has led a team in NRC's Cambridge, UK laboratory researching nanomaterials, nanostructures and their potential applications in mobile devices. This work encompasses flexible and stretchable electronics, energy storage and multifunctional nanostructured materials and aims to enable new device form factors, functionalities and user interactions. Before joining NRC, Piers was a postdoctoral research fellow in the Nanoscience Centre at the University of Cambridge, studying the phase separation and self-assembly of functional polymeric materials, and previously at the School of Physics of the University of Exeter, where his interests ranged from studies of the emission and propagation of light in microstructured materials, the control of radiative and non-radiative energy transfer between dye molecules, and the operation of distributed feedback lasers. Piers holds B.Sc and Ph.D degrees from the University of Exeter, UK.

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