First Touch-Screen, Bendable E-Paper Developed 174
Al writes "The first touch-screen flexible e-paper has been developed by a team from Arizona State University and E-Ink (the company that makes the technology for Amazon's Kindle and Sony's Reader). Jann Kaminski and colleagues at ASU's Flexible Display Center say the main challenge is that most touch-screen technologies do not respond well to being flexed. So they used an inductive screen, which relies on a magnetized styluses to induce a field in a sensing layer at the back of the display. The first adopters for the technology are likely to be the US Army. Watch a video of the device being tested."
Failure on video! (Score:2, Informative)
notice how a row and column goes dead after the flexibility demonstration.
Still very neat demo of the first stage prototype.
Magnetic stylus != touch screen (Score:4, Informative)
Re:sure the display is flexible, but the backlight (Score:5, Informative)
e-ink displays have no back lights. That thing in the back was likely the magnetic sensor.
Re:Sounds cool (Score:3, Informative)
If you're worried about casting a shadow on the scree while interacting with the projection, might I suggest that you drive the projector with a data tablet and just sit comfortably off to the side. That will work a lot better than cramming 50+ people around a palm pilot sized display.
Re:I still don't get it (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Sounds cool (Score:2, Informative)
-Robustness. For field work a display that is inherently bendable is potentially less likely to break.
This is useful not only for field work, but also for day to day work as well. My Iliad screen cracked just by putting it the pouch on the back of the seat in front of me on an airplane. I thought that the E-reader from Plastic Logic (http://www.plasticlogic.com/) was supposed to be flexible, though.
Re:Sounds cool (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Failure on video! (Score:5, Informative)
Actually not, that row and column are light from the get-go, rewind and rewatch. I'm also not sure, but that could be a reflection.
Re:Sounds cool (Score:4, Informative)
"bended"? C'mon, I know /. is the home of the "offline illiterate", but "bended"?
While "bended" is archaic, it's still grammatically correct.