About - Tanvas

Tanvas Puts Touch Inside the Touchscreen

Our mission is to connect people to the digital world through rich touch interactions.

Despite advances in graphics and sound, today’s touchscreen is still just a lifeless window into the digital world. Our technology adds a new dimension – the realistic sense of touch – so you can create dynamic textures that can be felt with the swipe of a finger.

We use electrostatics to control friction and create virtual touch. The applications for this technology are endless – feel the edges of keys, the snap of a toggle switch, the swipe of a turned page, the direction and magnitude of impacts in a game.

For anyone who wants to elevate, deliver or participate in a more engaging and complete touchscreen experience, Tanvas provides a touchable canvas on which to create. Our programmable tools allow OEMs, agencies and developers to imagine and create an infinite number of holistic and integrated experiences on any touch display.

Read more about surface haptics and how this technology can be implemented.

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Leadership Team

Ed Colgate

Co-Founder and CEO

“Imagine how stark life would be if everything we touched felt exactly the same: smooth, hard and featureless. Yet that is precisely the experience that we’ve been forced to accept in the digital world. No more! Our mission is to bring “touch” fully into the touchscreen experience. We create the technology and tools that support rich, versatile and satisfying tactile experiences.”

Michael Peshkin

Co-founder

“Everyone expects their touchscreen to feel flat. It’s possible that we have lost our sense of touch or at least our expectation of being able to feel something on a touchscreen. I look forward to people becoming connoisseurs of touch, and I think they will.”

Greg Topel

Chief Business Officer

“The major drawback of touchscreens has always been the missing element of physical feedback. We constantly interact with the world through the sense of touch. Yet until now, that has not been possible in our electronic devices. Tanvas finally empowers touchscreens with what we didn’t know we were missing: true interaction with what you see.”

Mondher Cherif

Chief Scientist

What a Long, Multisensory Trip It's Been

Mar 2006

Surface haptics research launched in the Neuroscience and Robotics Lab (NxR) at Northwestern University and the first of 30+ patents filed.

May 2011

Tanvas is Launched.

July 2012

Tanvas received an NSF SBIR Phase I grant.

March 2013

Secured seed round of investment from a major OEM.

June 2015

Closed a $4.6M Series A investment from R7 Partners, Peak6, Northwestern University, and Silicon Valley venture investors.

July 2016

Hired our 10th employee (and still hiring).

January 2017

Tanvas publicly debuted TanvasTouch at CES 2017. The technology was listed on WIRED’s Top 10 Sharpest Designs and received The Verge’s Best of CES “Most Touching” Award. Tanvas also received an IHS Markit Innovation award for the Automotive category as well as the prestigious Tibbetts Award from the SBA.

June 2018

Tanvas and Mimo Monitors are first to bring surface haptics to the digital signage and conference room display arena.
In collaboration with MediaCom, TanvasTouch® powered the “Gillette Babyface” campaign which received Gold and Silver at the 2018 Festival of Media Global Awards, as well as a Silver Lion at the 2018 Cannes Lion International Festival for Creativity.