Researchers at the Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS) have created reprogrammable Braille that could eliminate the need for unique pages without using a braille display. It’s described as “a framework to encode memory, in the form of Braille-like dimples and bumps, onto a blank, lattice-free material.” This material is as dynamic as the words it can contain, changing as needed to reflect new text.
“We show how an otherwise featureless curved elastic shell, when loaded appropriately, can store elastic bits (e-bits) that can be written and erased at will anywhere along the shell,” said L. Mahadevan, the Lola England de Valpine professor of applied mathematics at SEAS and senior author of the study. “This system could serve as the basis for small-scale mechanical memories.”