Boréas: Switching it up with haptics

In the past few years, the haptics sector has undergone a transformation of sorts, expanding beyond its niche beginnings into a burgeoning field poised for mainstream adoption. Bromont Quebec-based Boréas Technologies clearly stands at the forefront of this evolving technology – seizing new market opportunities with its innovative solutions.

In today’s world of creating electronic devices, haptics is playing a growing role in creating immersive and intuitive user experiences. Boreas has been pivotal in these developments, championing the advantages of piezoelectric actuators over traditional Linear Resonant Actuators (LRA) and Cylindrical Resonant Motors (CRM). Their innovations have led to the miniaturization of force-sensing and vibration systems, making haptic feedback more precise and responsive.

Piezo Haptic Trackpad. Source: Boreas Technology

“We are seeing a trend in terms of industrial design toward either seamless or removing buttons or more advanced user experience. This means more companies are considering how they can use haptics – adding value to what they deliver to the customer,” said Simon Chaput, president and founder of Boréas.

Read the differentiation

“Today, most tech devices are multi use, such as a smartphone. When using it, you’re taking a picture, or you may be gaming on it – two different user experiences. Haptics is able to read that differentiation – between alternate use cases of the same device. While before it was more like you have one device that could do many things through its display, but the user experience was still not quite there,” Chaput explained.

With its commitment to enhancing user interfaces in vehicles and smartphones, Boreas is focused on advanced haptic feedback to improve overall user experience. As the haptics landscape continues to evolve, Chaput remains dedicated to pushing the boundaries of what is possible, ensuring that haptics not only meet but exceed the expectations of a rapidly growing market.

“A few years ago, we realized that we actually need to be more than just a chip supplier. We really need to add a complete engineering team, including mechanical engineers and software engineers – to be able to design a complete system. We spent a lot of our time on mobile application, and we’re also working to implement our technology into PC, tablet and IoT designs,” Chaput stated.

Cultural or regional preferences can influence the design and implementation of haptic feedback into a smartphone or any other interface, according to Chaput.

“There can be regional differences or preferences around the world. Take a global company like Samsung as an example. They sell their phones in North America and in Korea, but they feel slightly different in use. That’s because they know Koreans like it to feel slightly different than in North America,” explained Chaput.

“So, this regionalization of use may have the OEM provide default settings, which then let the user change it a little bit. For us, it means that if we’re talking to a design team that is based in Korea, or in China or in the US, we also need to change our demonstrator a little bit to use waveforms or effects that may be more appealing to people from that region. A lot of what we’re doing is educating the market, we will work with the (OEM) customer, we will train their design team,” said Chaput.

For the engineers responsible for implementing haptics into the design, Chaput says the main challenge remains the interaction between the mechanical and the electrical teams. Unlike in the past, where electronics was more or less designed in isolation – Chaput says that there needs to be communication or “synching” between the mechanical team (external design) and the electronic team (internal circuitry) today.

Automotive certified

Boreas has marked some milestone achievement in the past couple of years – now boasting 50 employees, with more than half involved with engineering. Having launched multiple haptic buttons of late, the firm continues to add to its portfolio of more than 30 technology patents. While keeping all R&D within Canada, Chaput has established local support in both Taiwan and China, as well as the US –to be closer to its international customers. The firm also recently qualified for CQ 100, necessary to do business in the automotive space.

In lockstep with that classification, Boréas developed its third-generation, piezo-based haptics for automotive, consumer and mobile applications —the BOS1211, which lets automotive OEMs and Tier 1 suppliers add highly responsive, customizable tactile feedback to the buttons and sliders in the car’s central display and steering wheel — offering much faster response time and localized feedback, as well as extended frequency range — to touch interactions. This is a dramatic improvement over older haptic technologies, such as linear resonant actuators (LRAs), which have much slower startup and ramp-down time as well as a very limited frequency range.

Gated by their larger size and inherent performance problems, LRAs deliver a ‘mushy’ feel to the touch because the LRA isn’t localized to the actual button that’s pressed. In contrast, piezo haptic buttons and sliders deliver “crisp” effects that can be customized to mimic the feel of mechanical buttons because they can be located under a specific button, according to Chaput.

“What we are able to provide them with our technology is really combining the best of both worlds, like adding haptics to either a screen or smart surface where you get the same feeling as a mechanical switch,” Chaput noted. “But you also get the reconfigurability of the touchscreen. So I think we think that this will be kind of the sweet spot in terms of providing something that is easy to use, provides premium feeling, and is also very configurable.”