Tactile-feedback touch screen

A tactile feedback unit for providing tactile feedback on a touch-screen display, said tactile feedback unit comprising:

• a gel layer having a plurality of separately deformable discrete surface areas of said touch-screen display, said gel layer being permeated with magnetically attractive particles;
• at least one control element defined on said touch-screen display, the at least one control element overlapping one of the plurality of separately deformable discrete surface areas, the control element being selected by a user touching the at least one defined control element;
• a tactile feedback controller that separately controls said deformation of each of said plurality of discrete areas of said gel layer including at least the active separately deformable discrete surface area;
• and
• a deforming layer having a plurality of electromagnets arranged in a grid, each of said plurality of electromagnets being controllable by said tactile feedback controller, where one of the plurality of electromagnets corresponds to each of the separately deformable discrete surface areas and wherein selection of the at least one control elements causes the tactile feedback controller to activate the corresponding one of the plurality of magnets thereby causing a dimple in a relative thickness of the gel layer, the dimple is located on the discrete surface area directly over the at least one defined control element.

A touch-screen display comprising:

• a digitizer layer for detecting a location of contact with a touch-screen display surface by a user;
• a gel layer having a plurality of separately deformable discreet surface areas of said touch-screen display;
• a display layer that generates a display, the generated display including a plurality of control elements defined on said touch-screen display, each of the plurality of control elements positioned to overlap a corresponding discrete surface area of the plurality of separately deformable discrete surface areas;
• a deforming layer disposed beneath said display layer, said deforming layer comprising a plurality of electromagnets arranged in a grid, each of the plurality of electromagnets corresponds to one of the plurality of separately deformable discrete areas;
• and
• a tactile feedback controller that separately controls each of said plurality of electromagnets of said plurality of electromagnets and the deformation of the corresponding discrete area, the tactile feedback controller detects selection of one of the plurality of control elements via the digitizer layer and in response activates the electromagnet corresponding to the selected control element, the activation of the electromagnet forms a dimple in a relative thickness of the gel layer, the dimple is located on the touch screen display directly over the selected control element.