Robots to navigate touchscreens

If there’s still one complaint we all have about touchscreens, it’s that sometimes, we miss physical buttons. Whether it’s a game controller or a keyboard, having tactile feedback is often considered a better solution. Which is what led to the development of these tiny robot Thumbles that roll onto a touchscreen as needed to provide temporary physical controls.

Developed by PattenStudio, a design shop that specialises in interactive experiences, the robots are designed to be used on a large touchscreen or projected tabletop interface. Finger taps and hand gestures still remain the prominent way to interact with what’s on-screen, but the robots can jump it any time. So for example, when editing video, one of the robots can hover over the timeline providing a physical way to scrub footage back and forth.

Or three of them can roll into position when a colour corrector is activated, serving as rotatable red, green, and blue dials. Because the robots are self-powered, they can even provide feedback by rolling against the user’s motions. So a slider can be prevented from moving too far, or a dial could provide resistance when a setting reaches its maximum value.

In theory, 26 of these robots could form a massive keyboard, although they’d need to be miniaturised even further to provide any kind of touch-typing functionality.