VIDEO BASED 3D TACTILE RECONSTRUCTION INPUT DEVICE HAVING A DEFORMABLE MEMBRANE

A tactile image mapper has a vessel with a deformable membrane on one side and a clear face plate on the other side. The vessel is filled with an optically dense material, such as ink, and a pressure regulator varies and measures the pressure of the optically dense material to cause the deformable membrane to assume the shape of an object to be tactually sensed. A ring illuminator shines light through the clear face plate to the back side of the deformable membrane and a video camera captures the reflections off of the back side of the deformable membrane. A microcomputer captures a frame from the video signal and interprets areas with high intensities in the frame as protrusions on the surface of the object and areas with low intensities in the frame as low areas on the object. Based upon the interpretations at each point within the frame of the video signal, the tactile image mapper reconstructs a high resolution synthesized three dimensional topographical image of the object.