A touchable tablet to guide the visually impaired From: ACM TechNews - 05/10/2017 Researchers at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne, Switzerland (EPFL) have developed a tablet to help visually impaired people navigate unfamiliar places. The device quickly forms shapes and relief maps that users can explore with their fingers using their sense of touch. In addition, the tablet could be used to help visually impaired schoolchildren learn subjects such as geometry or mathematics. The tablet consists of 192 tiny buttons that can move up and down in milliseconds, almost instantaneously creating patterns for users to feel and interpret. Each button contains a tiny magnet placed between two coils and two thin layers of steel. The EPFL team says any of the buttons can be moved up or down by generating a local magnetic field. Read the entire article at: https://actu.epfl.ch/news/a-touchable-tablet-to-guide-the-visually-impaired Links: Electromagnetic Haptic Display: portable, fast, and wireless technology (with video 1:31) http://lmts.epfl.ch/cms/site/lmts/lang/en/haptics_EM BlindPAD (with video 1:43) https://www.blindpad.eu Herbert Shea https://people.epfl.ch/herbert.shea