Boréas has introduced what it claims is the first button-replacement solution that combines force sensing, gesture detection, and localized haptics.

The sense of touch conveys important information about internal and external conditions. Receptors can perceive temperature, pressure, friction, or stretch. But what do we feel when we tap, swipe, scroll, and fling on the glass screen of our smartphone? Hardly anything. Haptics can bring back the touch sensory information.

Boréas Technologies (Bromont, Canada) has introduced what it claims is the first button-replacement solution that combines force sensing, gesture detection, and localized haptics. Using off-the-shelf piezo actuators and Boréas’ proprietary CapDrive drivers, the NexusTouch piezoelectric sensor platform allows designers to expand touch-based user interfaces on the sides of smartphones and gaming phones so that the exact button triggers the exact haptic feedback in real time, the company said.

“In the past, our offer was really just about sensing and localizing haptics so that we could replicate a button and enable OEMs to go with buttonless phones,” Simon Chaput, Boréas’ founder and CEO, told EE Times. “Now, we are able to add gesture detection to do something very similar to ultrasonic sensors.”

10/17-19 EAC