>> Braille Displays Get New Life With Artificial Muscles
>>
>> Research with tiny artificial muscles may yield a full-page active
>> Braille
>> system that can refresh
>> automatically and come to life right beneath your fingertips.
>>
>> Yosi-Bar Cohen, a senior researcher at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory
>> in
>> Pasadena, Calif,
>> was inspired during a business trip to Washington, D.C., where a
>> convention
>> for people with
>> visual impairments was taking place.
>>
>> Bar-Cohen came up with an idea to create a "living Braille," a digital,
>> refreshable Braille device
>> using electroactive polymers, also known as artificial muscles. He wrote
>> up
>> a technology report
>> and included information in a related book that he published. His
>> writings
>> inspired other
>> scientists and engineers to create active displays using this technology,
>> and prototypes are now
>> under development around the world.
>>
>> "I hope that sometime in the future we will have Braille on an iPhone.
>> It
>> will be portable and
>> able to project a picture of a neighborhood popping up in front of you in
>> the form of raised dots,"
>> said Bar-Cohen. "A digital Braille operated by artificial muscles could
>> provide for rapid
>> information exchange, such as e-mail, text messaging and access to the
>> web
>> and other electronic
>> databases or archives."
>>
>> According to the World Health Organization, about 314 million people are
>> visually impaired
>> worldwide; 45 million of them are blind.
>>
>> Recently, Bar-Cohen was contacted by the Center for Braille Innovation of
>> the Boston-based
>> National Braille Press to reach out to the Electroactive Polymer
>> community
>> and take advantage
>> of his role in this field. The National Braille Press is a non-profit
>> Braille printing and publishing
>> house that promotes the literacy of blind children through Braille.
>>
>> Current Braille Display Technologies
>>
>> The challenge for creating an active Braille display is in packing many
>> small dots into a tiny
>> volume.
>>
>> Unlike hardcopy Braille, a refreshable display requires the raising and
>> lowering of a large number
>> of densely packed dots that allow a person to quickly read them.
>> Currently,
>> commercial active
>> Braille devices are limited to a single line of characters. A full page
>> of
>> Braille typically has 25
>> lines of up to 40 characters per line. Characters are represented by six
>> or
>> eight dots per cell,
>> arranged in two columns. To produce a page of refreshable Braille using
>> electroactive polymers
>> requires individually activating and controlling thousands of raiseable
>> dots.
>>
>> Developing New Braille Technologies
>>
>> Some of the leading-edge work in Braille technology was developed at SRI
>> in
>> Menlo Park, Calif.
>> Richard Heydt, a senior research engineer there who was involved in
>> developing a prototype
>> says, "The electroactive polymer technology seems to be a natural fit for
>> Braille and tactile
>> display applications."
>>
>> The Braille display developed at SRI is based on activating a type of
>> polymer consisting of a thin
>> sheet of acrylic that deforms in response to voltage applied across the
>> film. The individual Braille
>> dots are defined by a pattern on this film, and each dot is independently
>> activated to produce the
>> dot combinations for Braille letters and numbers.
>>
>> In currently available active refreshable Braille displays, each dot is a
>> pin driven by a small motor
>> or electromagnetic coil. In contrast, in the SRI display the actuators
>> are
>> defined regions on a
>> single sheet of film. Thus, while each dot is raised or lowered by its
>> own
>> applied voltage, there
>> are no motors, bulky actuators, or similar components. Since the system
>> has
>> far fewer discrete
>> components for a Braille dot array, it would be potentially much lower in
>> cost.
>>
>> "The contributions of the developers of electroactive materials to making
>> a
>> low-cost, active
>> Braille display would significantly improve the life of many people with
>> visual impairments,
>> while advancing the field to benefit other applications" said Bar-Cohen.
>>
>> Looking for the 'Holy Braille'
>>
>> The Boston-based National Braille Press has recently established a Center
>> for Braille Innovation.
>> They're looking for the "Holy Braille," a full-page electronic Braille
>> display, at a low cost.
>>
>> "We feel that the exciting field of electroactive polymer technology has
>> matured to the point
>> where it can provide real solutions for Braille displays. We welcome and
>> encourage anyone who
>> wants to take part in Braille innovation," said Noel H. Runyan, National
>> Braille Press, Center for
>> Braille Innovation
>>
>> In the spring of 2010, Bar-Cohen is including a special session on
>> tactile
>> displays at an SPIE
>> conference. SPIE is the international society for optics and photonics.
>> Tactile displays will be
>> presented and possibly demonstrated at the conference. He hopes these
>> baby
>> steps may someday
>> lead to a full-page Braille system that will allow people to feel and
>> "see"
>> the universe beneath
>> their fingers.
>>
>> JPL is managed for NASA by the California Institute of Technology in
>> Pasadena.
>>
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