Microsoft files patent application for touchscreen that touches back

It’s interesting how touch screen technologies have evolved throughout the time, but it’s more interesting to take a peak at the future, at how we will interact with gadgets in the futures. Thankfully, from time to time a new and interesting patent emerges, like the one filed by Microsoft about a special kind of screen that once touched reacts by providing tactile feedback to your fingers.

The patent is called “Light-induced Shape-memory Polymer Display Screen” and uses infrared light to detect points of touch and then change the texture of that particular spot, providing so much needed feedback when interacting with a touchscreen. It’s not the first attempt to make touchscreen offer some kind of feedback, as a lot of current devices offer vibration feedback, but that’s just a way to tell you that you’ve actually touched the screen, not to give any kind of indication of where you’ve pressed and which kind of action you’ve did. Imagine that the patent filed by Microsoft could offer a different effect according to the action you took.

I guess all we have to do now is wait a few years till it makes it to commercial products (if it ever will), as for now Surface is the device used by Microsoft for testing.

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