Untethered Stretchable Displays for Tactile Interaction

Although physical buttons provide tactile sensations that allow them to be identified and pressed without visual focus, their static nature limits their use for dynamic interfaces. Conversely, touchscreens offer highly flexible, task-specific interfaces, but they do not provide the tactile qualities needed for vision-free interaction. Here, we present a stretchable display that can change shape from a flat sheet into a dome when pressurized. The vanishing interface we designed uses hyperelastic light-emitting capacitors (HLECs) that actively emit light, sense strain, and detect finger presses. We characterize the stretch and luminance of the device as the thin sheet is pressurized. Interestingly, but not unexpectedly, these HLEC panels show a pressure-dependent luminance, which we use to highlight where they are being pressed, a visual display of haptic information. We further demonstrate the co-located touch sensing and light-emitting capabilities by developing an interactive memory game.