A Bump-Covered Screen Protector Can Surprisingly Make Touchscreens React Faster to Swipes

The touchscreens used on smartphones , tablets , and wearables are leaps and bounds better than similar engineering science from a few ten ago , but there ’s still lots of room for improvement , as researchers have demonstrated byleveraging a bump - covered projection screen protectorto dramatically scale down a modern touchscreen ’s latency .

As responsive as a touchscreen may seem , there ’s in reality a slight hold between when you pink a screen and when a twist ’s user user interface reacts to the gesture and updates the on - screen graphics . It ’s almost completely unperceivable when you ’re just do quick tap , but it becomes more obvious with farseeing gesture like swipes . Grab an icon on your smartphone ’s home screen and quickly drag it around , and you ’ll see its positioning on screen trail behind where the backsheesh of your finger really is . The delay is also very much detectable when draw or write on a touchscreen using a stylus , which is why few devices fare close to utterly recreating the playpen on paper experience which instantaneously leave stroke behind .

Touchscreen latency will amend over time ( most smartphones exhibit a reaction time of around 80 - millseconds today ) but research worker fromCarnegie Mellon University ’s Future Interfaces Grouphave come up with a clever shortcut for improving rotational latency right on now without actually modifying a touchscreen ’s computer hardware .

Gif:YouTube - Future Interfaces Group

It starts with the summation of a plastic film over a touch screen that ’s cover in a grid of little bumps measuring just five micrometer high . The bumps are invisible to the human eye , and scarcely perceptible as a finger’s breadth impress across the apply motion picture , but like scratching a fingernail across one of those lenticular images that appears to move as you vary your view angle , sneak a finger tip or stylus over the normal of bumps produces a subtle acoustical vibration that often falls in the ultrasonic range outside of human hearing .

A substance abuser ’s capitulum ca n’t hear the vibration farm , but a mike can , and the researchers are able to seize the sounds produced and watch the speed and direction of a touchscreen fundamental interaction with a latency of around just 28 - milliseconds . What they ca n’t determine from the vibrations is where a finger or stylus really make liaison with a touchscreen , so they use that acoustical data along with the more accurate positional data point captured by the capacitive touch screen itself to give a simple machine encyclopaedism model that can anticipate where a finger point or style is moving , and update a machine ’s substance abuser interface to reflect that foretelling .

This method is n’t always 100 % accurate , but it ’s precise enough to make touchscreen devices feel far more reactive and responsive , with comprehend latency reduced to just 16 - msec and distance errors reduce to around just five - millimeter . As far as a drug user is concerned , the gadget they ’re using suddenly sense snappier , and while actuate around icons is n’t the most exciting software program , this research could potentially vastly improve the imitation pen on paper experience , leave artists and devoted bank bill taker to more naturally use their gimmick .

Illustration: Future Interfaces Group