A microfluidic panel lets users push buttons on a flat interface.

By Jessica Leber on December 3, 2012

Touch screens are ubiquitous: in 2012, 1.2 billion were made for smartphones and 130 million for tablets, and they’re showing up in everything from game consoles to car navigation interfaces. But typing on them can be difficult. Tactus is trying to solve that problem. The company’s cofounder and chief technology officer, Micah Yairi, helped create a multi-layered panel that contains microchannels filled with a proprietary oil. When signaled by, say, a person launching a text-messaging app, an actuator pumps additional fluid into the channels, and buttons rise up from an elastomeric cover. The user then depresses the button slightly to trigger the touch screen and enter the letter or number. When typing is done, the panel reverts to a flat screen for finger-swiping within one second.

Tactus isn’t the only company recognizing a need for screens to offer tactile or so-called haptic feedback. Many phones already have rudimentary versions; tapping a certain button makes the whole phone buzz. Emerging designs include piezoelectric actuators that make the vibrations more localized. (Apple recently filed a patent on such technology.) And other companies, including Disney and a startup called Senseg, are using electrodes to issue minuscule shocks to your finger, simulating a rough texture.

Tactus’s approach, however, is the only one that allows users to orient their finger on the screen before actually depressing the key, or to rest their fingers on buttons without triggering them. Tactus is working to improve the panel’s appearance and create custom demonstrations for equipment manufacturers. One partner collaborating on prototypes is Touch Revolution, a division of the Taiwanese company TPK, one of the world’s largest touch-screen manufacturers.

Button geometries can be customized during the manufacturing process. In a  tablet or smartphone, software would probably change touch–sensitive areas of the display on the fly so that they’d align precisely with button shapes. This would prevent accidental keystrokes when fingers touch areas between raised buttons.

Tactus CEO and cofounder Craig Ciesla, who raised $6 million last year in venture investments, expects products to reach market in late 2013. “It’s really a design tool to give to manufacturers,” he says.

(Reuters) – Borrowing by small businesses rose in October, a report on Monday showed, as the central bank launched its latest round of monetary stimulus to encourage borrowing and spending.

The Thomson Reuters/PayNet Small Business Lending Index, which measures the overall volume of financing to small U.S. companies, rose to 107.5 from an upwardly revised 96.4 in September, PayNet said.

PayNet had initially reported the September figure as 94.1.

Borrowing was up 11 percent in October from a year earlier.

PayNet founder Bill Phelan said the rise was likely less a reaction to the Fed’s low-rate policy, which has been in place since December 2008, than a sense of growing optimism among smaller firms.

“They are seeing some profit-producing opportunities, and are wading in,” Phelan said in an interview. “The odds have shifted toward some optimism for next year.”

Small businesses are often responsible for the bulk of new job creation after recessions. The recent recession ended in 2009, but sluggish growth has meant weak job growth, and unemployment in October registered 7.9 percent, well above the 5.5 percent to 6 percent that many economists view as normal.

PayNet’s lending index typically correlates to economic growth one or two quarters in the future.

The Federal Reserve in mid-September unleashed a new round of bond buying to lower borrowing costs and spur businesses to spend and, eventually, to hire.

Separate PayNet data showed financial stress at near-record-low levels. Accounts overdue by 30 days fell to 1.2 percent of the total from 1.21 percent the previous month, and were near the 1.17 percent record reached earlier this year. Phelan said a “normal” rate of delinquency is 1.5 percent to 1.6 percent.

Longer-term delinquency rates also eased. Accounts behind 180 days or more, which are considered in default and unlikely to be paid, fell to 0.29 percent from 0.32 percent.

Accounts behind 90 days or more, or in severe delinquency, were unchanged at 0.24 percent.

PayNet collects real-time loan information, such as originations and delinquencies, from more than 250 leading U.S. lenders.

(Reporting by Ann Saphir in Chicago; Editing by Chizu Nomiyama)