Magazine "NewScientist" 17 October 2010

"NewScientist" 17 October 2010

Next step for touchscreens.

IMAGINE entering your living room and sliding your foot purposefully over a particular stretch of floor. Suddenly your hi-fi system springs into life and begins playing your favourite CD.
Floors you can use like a gaint touchscreen could one day be commonplace thanks to a "touch floor" developed by Patrick Baudisch at the Hasso Plattner Institute in Potsdam, Germany. His prototype, named Multi-toe, is made up of thin layers of silicone and clear acrylic on top of a rigid glass sheet. Light beams shone into the acrylic layer bounce around inside until pressure from above allows them to escape. A camera below captures the light and registers an image of whatever has pressed down upon the floor.
Some touchscreens already employ this technique, but the new version offers greater resolution, allowing the pattern of the tread on someone's shoes to be detected. Baudisch has already adapted it for the video game Unreal Tournament, with players leaning in different directions to move on screen, and tapping their toes to shoot. A virtual keyboard on the floor can also be activated with the feet.
Baudisch presented the work at the Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems in Atlanta, Georgia, this week. He admits the system cannot easily be used on existing floors due to the need for underfloor cavities to house the cameras, but says future versions will address this.