ELIA Life to roll out tactile displays for the visually impaired
By Darren Murph 
posted Nov 5th 2007 9:02AM
posted Nov 5th 2007 9:02AM
A project that saw a prototype form some five years back is finally nearing commercialization, as ELIA Life Technology has recently been licensed to bring a tactile graphic display device and fingertip graphic reader to market. Originally developed by NIST researchers, the aforementioned screen enables individuals to feel an array of images on a reusable surface by raising around 3,600 actuator points into a certain pattern, each of which can be sent electronically to the reader. Separately, a finger-based device utilizes 100 minuscule pins that can be activated as a person scans a given surface, which enables the pins to move across one's skin as it "translates" the text / image / etc. Regrettably, a concrete release date wasn't mentioned, but judging by the looks of it, it shouldn't be long now before it's widely available to those interested.[Via Coolest-Gadgets]
Wasn't this in a movie in the early 90's? Some black ops team, and the computer hacker was blind?
Yup: http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/sneakers/
3600 pins? that's like 60x60 if we assume a square, not very much really, still there are limits to touch I guess.
perhaps they can make it so they vibrate individually to give some more 'texture' to the 'view'. or make them somehow thinner/thicker on command, or flexible/stiff.
I think just having pins pop up has been done since the 70's and it's time to move on to more challenging concepts.
What they really need to make is a braille cell phone.
Yeah, it was also in a Star Trek: Voyager Episode... Year of Hell (one of the two parts, not sure which one), season 2 I beleive, maybe season 4, I don't remember. Tuvok got blinded by like fire or something and was being escorted everywhere by Seven of Nine. "Computer, Activate Tactile Command Interface" or something like that.