ARMdevices.net

Haptic feedback is one of the most important features of Smartwatches and other wearable devices. The Apple watch with its Taptic engine has one of the best haptic actuators in the industry but at the IDTechEx show, the folks at Novasentis were showing technology that aims to do much better. With traditional haptic technologies like LRA and ERM, they are bulky and provide just a solitary, universal buzz which vibrates the entire wearable device. Novasentis has invented a new technology based on electro mechanical polymers which is ultra thin, when they placed this in my hand, I could barely feel its weight, and the material is flexible. So instead of putting a big haptic device in the body of the wearable device, Novasentis proposes that you embed their haptic film right into the strap of the watch since is is so thin and you could have localized vibration and detect the all important patterns all around the wrist to understand different notification categories without even looking at your smartwatch display. This will enable thinner and lighter smartwatches without a big haptic engine inside. Most importantly, Novasentis material allows to offer a range of haptic feedback from very low frequency ‘taps’ to very high frequency audible ‘alarms’. Their idea is to create a haptic language and a wearable device could have as many as 10 or even 100 different haptic ‘feelings’ that a user can get used to and memorize and could get very useful information before having to turn to the display. Novasentis said that 5 OEM’s are currently designing wearable devices with their material and the company is currently raising funds to get their technology into mass production hopefully arriving soon to awesome Smartwatches and other smart device.