Austin, Texas-based Cirrus Logic announced it is launching a line of sensor chips that will promote high-quality tactile feedback in a variety of applications, including gaming devices.
The company specializes in low-power, low-latency chips that do mixed-signal processing, or taking signals from the real world and converting them into digital.
These new sensor chips focus on haptic feedback, and they could be used in devices such as smartphones that get rid of physical buttons and replace them with virtual buttons that give you feedback when you touch them. They also have a variety of potential applications in gaming devices, in controllers and similar devices used in connection with slot machines.
These kinds of buttons have fewer mechanical controls, and that can make them more reliable, more responsive, and convincing for the user, said Harsh Rao, the manager of haptics and sensing at Cirrus Logic, in an interview with GamesBeat. The company has already had some success on this front.
“We started with haptics in mobile phones on the Android side, and we have been reasonably successful there with all the big customers,” Rao said. “It’s been a successful journey, trying to elevate haptics. And now we are moving to expand the usage of haptics.”
Cirrus already provides haptic technology for smartphones, and now it will expand into immersive touch experience for applications in automotive, augmented and virtual reality, gaming, personal computers, and wearables.
