Bosch goes touchy-feely with their new haptic feedback touchscreen

While Bosch is best known for making some of the best power tools in the business, they’ve also been known to develop some pretty spiffy car hardware too. At a recent earnings call at their Malaysia headquarters, Bosch showcased a host of products across the range along with their next-gen neoSense haptic feedback touchscreen.

Image – Bosch

Announced and showcased earlier at CES 2016, Bosch’s conceptual NeoSense touchscreen was an innovative affair that offered touch-based feedback depending on what virtual key you pressed onscreen so that you can identify functions by touch alone. The screen also allowed for users to differentiate and navigate menus via differences in finger pressure. The haptic feedback touchscreen has immediate applications in terms of in-car infotainment systems. Car makers can directly apply the haptic feedback on the display so that users can use in-car features like the GPS, radio and smartphone by touch alone without having to take eyes off the road.

Image – Bosch

At the aforementioned earnings call in Malaysia, Bosch showed a working prototype of their haptic feedback touchscreen to media. The touchscreen has yet to be picked up by any major car manufacturer as yet but according to the chaps at Bosch, it can be integrated from the factory floor into most car models without any untoward complications. What was most impressive about the demo was the fact that it offered several rough looking blocks with stone-like textures on the display. Touching them produced a similar result as stroking the real thing. Virtual sliders onscreen had easily felt markers so you know just how far along the slider that you pulled it along. It’s a fascinating application of tech and while the demo seems rather plain at the moment, it is likely that it’ll be gussied up with manufacturer specific UI’s further along down the road. Odds are we won’t be seeing it in any cars anytime soon but we’ll keep our fingers crossed.

An interesting titbit during the event was that Bosch invested over RM1,38 million in Malaysia towards research and development as well as the expansion of their car multimedia plant in Penang. Bosch also enjoyed an increase in sales across the board with a bump up by 10% to RM664 million in 2015. That’s a lot of power tools, mind. For more on Bosch and their array of hardware across the range swing by their official site at www.bosch.com