The TGD Project Daniel Hajas and David Turner. What is a Tactile Graphics Display? A screen for your fingers! Our TGD will use Taxels rather than pixels.

The TGD Project

Daniel Hajas and David Turner

What is a Tactile Graphics Display?

• A screen for your fingers!

• Our TGD will use Taxels rather than pixels to represent graphical data physically.

• It will be a new way to interface with Maths and Science.

Why is our project needed?

• Nothing as capable as our project currently exists.

• The only competitor is the ……, which costs around £50,000 per unit!

• Other than that product, the only alternative for the blind are Braille displays.

The Dancing Dots Active Braille Display

What are the benefits?

• Visually impaired people (especially Physicists!) will be able to feel graphs and diagrams.

• They can interact with the world on an entirely new level.

• A whole new set of people will be able to more easily appreciate the beauty and wonder of science

And the benefits for the sighted?

• There are many uses for the sighted.

• 3D representations of maps (representing gradients of slopes etc.)

• Representing 3 dimensional graphs (it can be useful to sighted scientists also!)

How far into the project are we?

• Interface code is written and functional, though more is always being added.

• 3D designs for the hardware have been created.

• A 3D printer is being used to print them.

What tools have we used so far?

• We have used several capable, open source software tools:

1. Python 2.7

2. The Arduino IDE

3. OpenSCAD

4. Subversion

• We have also started to use a MakerBot Replicator 2, to create the hardware.

What does the future hold?

• An 8 by 8 proof of concept will be assembled.

• A research team has been recruited to develop new actuators.

• Lots and lots of funding (hopefully!)

Thank you for listening.

We hope you found it interesting!