Pocket Braille for People on the Move From: New Scientist - 10/17/2005 - Vol. 188, No. 2521, P. 28 By: Celests Biever Researchers at the University of Tokyo have taken a step closer to developing a portable electronic Braille display, although Takao Someya still expresses concerns that the device may not be powerful enough. "If a blind person cannot feel the movement of the dots, the device will not be practical," says Someya. The device, a sheet of tiny plastic paddles that bend when voltage is applied across its electrodes, can fit in a pocket and roll up like a newspaper. Made up of flexible polymer and thin metal films, the display connects to a cell phone or laptop, and is better served when attempting to read a book or short messages, rather than usage while working. The prototype, which measures 16 centimeters square, weighs five grams, and is one millimeter thick, is much smaller than current dynamic displays, and is expected to be much more affordable. Current dynamic displays cost $3,800, but low-cost deposition techniques can be used to print the layers of the new display, which Someya says could make a price tag of $100 a possibility. Nanofabrication techniques may need to be used to speed the movement of the device's plastic paddles. Someya and his team even believe the display could be used to render a whole scene of images on its surface that the blind could feel. Read the entire article at: http://www.newscientist.com/channel/info-tech/mg18825213.500 ------- New pocket-size Braille system From: Netscape News - 10/12/2005 Blind people may soon be reading messages using the world's first portable electronic Braille. The pocket-sized display, which can be rolled up like a newspaper, is designed to connect to mobile phones and laptops. Researchers in Japan have produced a 16-centimetre-square prototype just one millimetre thick which weighs five grams. It incorporates 144 plastic "paddles" beneath a thin rubber surface which bend upwards when an electric current is applied. On the tip of each paddle is a sphere under a millimetre across that rises and produces a bump in the rubber. The bumps produce the Braille message, which can be read the normal way by feeling with the fingertips. When the current is switched off, the paddles straighten and the bumps disappear. Inventor Takao Someya, from the University of Tokyo, will present the device at the International Electron Devices meeting in Washington DC in December, New Scientist magazine reported. The device could go beyond Braille to allow the blind to feel images as well as words, says Someya. But Yoseph Bar-Cohen, an electronics expert at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena said: "If a blind person cannot feel the movement of the dots, the device will not be practical." ------- Y. Kato, S. Iba, T.Sekitani, Y. Noguchi, K. Hizu, X. Wang, K. Takenoshita, Y. Takamatsu, S. Nakano, K. Fukuda, K. Nakamura, T. Yamaue, M. Doi, K. Asaka, H. Kawaguchi, M. Takamiya, T. Sakurai, and T. Someya, "Flexible, Lightweight Braille Sheet Display with Plastic Actuators Driven by An Organic Field-Effect Transistor Active Matrix", IEEE International Electron Devices Meeting, Washington, DC, December 5 - 7, 2005.