Have anybody considered/tested others ways of displaying Braille?
E.g. 1. use lots of tiny heat emitter in place of dots
2. use heat/electrically deformable material(e.g. nitinol coil) to create the bump?
3. use tiny air valve to inflate little dots
//I'm sure there is more, add your ideas on the comments and i shall add it to this. (responding to ldischler: Your suggestions will not be deleted, and your annotation won't be deleted. I just want to encourage community contribution to people who will be developing these things)-- mofosyne, May 31 2010 Use Static Charge Braille_20display_2...g_20static_20charge [MisterQED, Jun 03 2010] http://en.wikipedia...ble_Braille_display [goldbb, Jun 07 2010] The NIST Braille Wheel http://www.itl.nist...e_reader-May04.html [goldbb, Jun 07 2010] //I'm sure there is more, add your ideas on the comments and i shall add it to this.//
And once you incorporate the annotated ideas, you can delete the annotations. Good plan! ;)-- ldischler, May 31 2010 lol don't worry, I won't! geeze chill!-- mofosyne, May 31 2010 There are already Braille transcribers, which consist of an array of pins driven by solenoids, in a little cluster. They can display Braille characters.-- MaxwellBuchanan, May 31 2010 However these display are pretty expensive, and is also pretty large.
There has got to be alternative ways to do this, that is either cheaper, or smaller/compact, or both-- mofosyne, May 31 2010 The basic braille transponder is pretty small and cheap - it's basically the size of a die. But yes, interesting to consider other options.-- MaxwellBuchanan, May 31 2010 What if the Braille weren't exactly bumps or dimples but were a definite change in texture or somesuch? I'm thinking some kind of electrostatic or nitinol-like carpet that sticks straight out under charge but flattens smooth with none.-- RayfordSteele, Jun 02 2010 [RayfordSteele] kinda like a kindle for the blind?
Actually that would be pretty cool.-- mofosyne, Jun 03 2010 I don't know where I read it but someone somewhere describes the realistic possibility that a blind person could read the words off the pages of a book just by detecting the differences in heat radiation hitting his forehead given by the black ink.-- daseva, Jun 03 2010 Only if you put a headline under the grill and then pressed it to your forehead. The words "bollocks" and "focus" spring to mind.-- MaxwellBuchanan, Jun 03 2010 I suppose there's always the possibility of selectively blowing through little airholes, like on an air-hockey table but much smaller in size, to inflate / deflate bumps or dimples as you scan across.
But that sounds mechanically complicated. Better would be a electromagnetic dimple system of some type.-- RayfordSteele, Jun 03 2010 Was starting to post an anno, but spun a different idea. (link)-- MisterQED, Jun 03 2010 According to Wikipedia, two groups, Leuven University in Belgium, and NIST, are developing rotating-wheel Braille displays, which would be smaller and simpler, and (once in production) cheaper, than conventional displays.-- goldbb, Jun 07 2010 random, halfbakery