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Disney Research Can Turn Nearly Any Surface Into a Touch Screen
surewouldoutlaw writes "Remember that scene in Fantasia where Mickey turns all the brooms into an army of workers? Well, Disney isn't quite there, yet. But scientists with the company's research lab at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh have been able to turn virtually any surface, including liquid water and the human body, into a multi-touch interface. The new system is called Touché, and it is as awesome as it sounds."
The technology is cool and all, but a touch "screen" detects where you are touching it - this detects only that you are touching an object, not where (though as shown it does detect how it's being touched).
The examples they give are pretty contrived but I'm sure there could be some good uses that come from it. One I can think of right away would be making current touch lamp switches more accurate, right now you just turn them on/off if you brush against them. It would be nicer if they needed a grasp or multiple fingers to turn them on/off.
It has the same problem as all gesture based systems though, the difficulty of discovering what the interface does... even touch controlled lamps have that issue, people can spend a while looking for a switch before they figure out they can just touch the body of the lamp.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
I think the most interesting part of this article for me is that Disney has a research arm. I didn't know or even think about that before seeing this. I took a look at the site and it seems like they do some cool stuff. They have locations near some major universities and in Zurich. Seems like it would be a good place to work.
K Man