Comments by "roidroid" (@roidroid) on "Shape-shifting tech will change work as we know it | Sean Follmer" video.

Sure is a lot of people in the comments who don't understand just how truly powerful tactile interfaces are. You're taking it for granted just how useful they are already in your everyday life. I can do a significant amount of my non-computer work with my eyes closed, because my environment is rich with tactile cues, i don't have to look at everything. Do you know how hard it would be to change gears on your car, if your hand was numb? You'd have to take your eyes off the road everytime. You can type without looking, but you can't type without looking if you can't feel the edges of the keys on your keyboard. What if everything you did on the computer was like that, if you could feel the edges of every button you click, if you could grab a window and feel the edge of it, feel it's resistance as you move it to the other side of your workspace. These sorts of things greatly speed up everything you do on a computer, a 50minute task turns into a 10 minute task.
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A problem is that it's expensive to make all of those actuators (900+!). Any design which uses a lot of actuators gets expensive very fast. Even if they're only $2 each, that's $1800 in actuators alone :(. I've been trying to make cheaper actuators, so that tables like this would be cheaper to make. At the moment i'm trying to make solenoids outof aluminium foil, instead of copper. If you've seen anything that could help, or is up this alley, feel free to send it my way (just hit reply).
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