WORLD
Revolutionary Technology Enables Objects to Know Your Touch
Baku, May 22 (AZERTAC). A doorknob that knows whether to lock or unlock based on how it is grasped, a Smartphone that silences itself if the user holds a finger to her lips and a chair that adjusts room lighting based on recognizing if a user is reclining or leaning forward are among the many possible applications of Touché, a new sensing technique developed by a team at Disney Research, Pittsburgh, and Carnegie Mellon University.
Touché is a form of capacitive touch sensing, the same principle underlying the types of touchscreens used in most smartphones. But instead of sensing electrical signals at a single frequency, like the typical touchscreen, Touché monitors capacitive signals across a broad range of frequencies.
This Swept Frequency Capacitive Sensing (SFCS) makes it possible to not only detect a “touch event,” but to recognize complex configurations of the hand or body that is doing the touching. An object thus could sense how it is being touched, or might sense the body configuration of the person doing the touching.
SFCS is robust and can enhance everyday objects by using just a single sensing electrode. Sometimes, as in the case of a doorknob or other conductive objects, the object itself can serve as a sensor and no modifications are required. Even the human body or a body of water can be a sensor.
In addition to Poupyrev, the research team included Chris Harrison, a Ph.D. student in Carnegie Mellon`s Human-Computer Interaction Institute, and Munehiko Sato, a Disney intern and a Ph.D. student in engineering at the University of Tokyo. The researchers will present their findings May 7 at CHI 2012, the Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, in Austin, Texas, where it has been recognized with a Best Paper Award.
By monitoring a range of signal frequencies, however, Touché can derive much more information. Different body tissues have different capacitive properties, so monitoring a range of frequencies can detect a number of different paths that the electrical charge takes through the body.
Depending on whether the knob was grasped, touched with one finger or two, or pinched, a door could be programmed to lock or unlock itself, admit a guest, or even leave a reply message, such as “I`ll be back in five minutes.”