The United States of America

David W Kardos

John W Roberts

Oliver T Slattery

Bretton Mark Swope

Nicholas Guttenberg

Gina Rodgers

Tracy Comstock

Volker Min

Edwin Mulkens

Michael Sutton

Edwin C Mulkens

Apparatus and methods for extended refreshable tactile graphic display are disclosed, the apparatus including an array of pins at a display surface, with pin setting actuators and display surface matrix preferably being separable units. The display matrix is provided by stacked functional layers, functions including temporary pin retention and pin locking.

Extended refreshable tactile graphic array for scanned tactile display

Apparatus and method for refreshable tactile display are disclosed, the apparatus being preferably embodied as a rotating-wheel refreshable Braille reader. The reader includes a housing having a reading aperture with a rotatable wheel assembly maintained therein so that a display surface of a rotating wheel passes the reading aperture. The wheel has endless rows of openings defined therethrough to the display surface, a pin held in each opening and freely movable therein. Actuators, at least equal in number to the rows of openings but substantially fewer in number than the openings, are held at a static location relative to the wheel for selectively moving pins in the rows so that Braille characters are arrayed at the display surface after passing the static location. Braille characters are thus streamed across the reading aperture of the housing.

Refreshable braille reader

A refreshable Braille reader apparatus and method are disclosed, the apparatus preferably utilizing a rotating cylinder having endless rows of openings defined therethrough to a display surface with a pin held in each opening and freely movable therein. Static actuators at least equal in number to the rows of openings through the cylinder are maintained at a station adjacent to the surface of the cylinder, and are configured and positioned so that the pins are selectively contactable at either of their ends by different ones of the actuators during cylinder rotation in either forward or reverse direction thereby selectively positioning first ends of the pins relative to the surface of the cylinder to allow streaming of Braille text across a display area in either forward or backward order depending upon selected direction of cylinder rotation.

Apparatus and method utilizing bi-directional relative movement for refreshable tactile display

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Columbia, MD, United States of America

David W Kardos