Future touchscreens could be a portable lab

They say that our fingers and hands are one of the dirtiest parts of our bodies, after all, who knows how many doorknobs, handles and buttons that you have come into contact with today, and multiply it with the thousands and millions of people who have done the same as you? Having said that, with touchscreen devices being so common, such bacteria and other nasties too, don’t mind residing on your glossy screen – and this is where researchers from the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST) worked on an interesting low-cost concept that is capable of performing microscopic analyses thanks to a smartphone’s touchscreen display.

Taking into account the advantage of the capacitive touchscreen, through applying a bio-sample like blood, saliva, and even urine from a LOC cartridge to the screen, this group of researchers fully intend to see the smartphone’s screen register specific changes in its capacitance, which will be an indication of what the sample contains. This would mean the phone will be able to perform the analysis and send a report of the results almost instantaneously. Still in the proof-of-concept stage, it might just make touchscreen phones a compulsory purchase for all budding pathologists should it materialize in the real world, don’t you think so?

New touchscreen tech recognizes different parts of the finger

Small touchscreen devices such smartphones certainly have their attractions, but they also have one drawback - there isn't much room on their little screens for touch-sensitive features. This means that users will sometimes instead have to go into sub-menus, or make do with jabbing their fingers at tiny controls. Researchers at Carnegie Mellon University's Human-Computer Interaction Institute, however, are working on an alternative. Their prototype TapSense system can differentiate between screen taps from different parts of the finger, and will perform different tasks accordingly.

TapSense works by analyzing the sound of objects hitting the glass of the touchscreen display. Using an inexpensive microphone attached to the device (the built-in mics don't work), the system can tell the difference between taps delivered by a finger's pad, nail, knuckle, or tip. It can also differentiate between taps from styluses made out of different types of inert materials, such as wood, acrylic and polystyrene foam.

An app running on a smartphone or other touchscreen device, equipped with TapSense, could perform different functions based on what part of the finger its operator used. This means that users could stay on one screen that had fairly large controls, changing modes or accessing features by alternating between various types of taps - not unlike using a right mouse button.

The researchers demonstrated one possible application of the technology, in which a knuckle tap on an email heading brought up a list of options, instead of opening the message. In another example, a paint app allowed users to draw freehand when using the pad of their finger, but inserted straight lines when they used their tip. In yet another, users could access alternate characters on a virtual keyboard app by typing with the tip of their finger (as opposed to the pad), and backspace by nail-tapping.

Because TapSense can tell the difference between styluses made from different materials, this means that multiple people could use the screen simultaneously and the device would be able to identify which user was which, based on what the point of their stylus was made of. Different functions could also be assigned to different materials, making possible a stylus with a "pen" on one end and an "eraser" on the other.

OmniTouch turns any surface into a touchscreen interface

Had Shakespeare been born several centuries later, he might have said "All the world's an interface," especially if he'd had a chance to play with the recently-developed, wearable OmniTouch system. While interactive interface projectors are far from new, this innovative concept design utilizes a different approach that promises to turn just about any solid surface into a touch-sensitive input device. Books, tables, walls, hands and other body parts, it's all fair game.

In its current proof-of-concept iteration, which was prototyped at idea-rich Microsoft Research in Redmond, Washington, by PhD student Chris Harrison and his team, the rough-hewn shoulder mounted device resembles a sci-fi prosthetic weapon, but looks can be deceiving.

"We explored and prototyped a powerful alternative approach to mobile interaction that uses a body-worn projection/sensing system to capitalize on the tremendous surface area the real world provides," explains Harrison.

Like the proverbial "better" mousetrap, the concept of mobile interaction seems prone to constant tinkering. The OmniTouch draws from a blend of disciplines to overcome numerous issues that beset similar devices. Some approaches require placing markers on the fingertips but still can't discern whether the fingers are "clicked" (touching the surface) or hovering. Others can't "read" surfaces beyond those of the user's own body or they lack the ability to respond to touch/drag motions.

To surmount these hurdles, Harrison and his colleagues combined a PrimeSense short-range depth camera with a Microvision ShowWX+ laser pico-projector. The camera generated a 320x240 depth map at a rate of 30FPS, even for objects as close as 8 inches (20cm). The projector delivered a sharp, focus-free, wide-angle image independent of the surface's distance - a useful property in such applications. Both devices were then linked to a desktop computer.

The OmniTouch gets its edge in finger position detection through a complex series of calculations that begins with the generation of the depth map. The second video below contains a detailed description of the process which enables the device to determine whether one's fingers are floating above a surface of actually contacting it. The inputs yielded closely approximate those of touchscreens and mice, so the possibilities for the OmniTouch are seemingly endless. Let's hope the wait for a commercial version isn't.

The paper, OmniTouch: Wearable Multitouch Interaction Everywhere, by Chris Harrison, Hrvoje Benko and Andy Wilson was presented in the Proceedings of the 24th Annual ACM Symposium on User Interface Software and Technology (Santa Barbara, California, October 16 - 19, 2011)

Source: Chris Harrison

All images courtesy Chris Harrison.

Agloves give full 10-finger gloved touchscreen functionality

With capacitive the technology of choice on the majority of touchscreen devices hitting the market, people have been coming up with all kinds of interesting ways to interact with their devices when the winter chill sets in and gloves become a necessity. Many South Koreans apparently turned to using sausages as a stylus but if you’d prefer not to be hassled by dogs as you type a text there are less meat product-based solutions, such as the North Face Etip gloves. Now there’s another glove-based solution in the form of Agloves, which provide even greater touchscreen friendly surface area for your hands.
Whereas the Etip gloves feature a conductive material known as X-Static fabric on the tips of the thumb and index finger, the Agloves are made with silver coated nylon to make the entire glove conductive. With silver boasting particularly high electrical conductivity it allows the Agloves to better transfer the skin’s bioelectrical charge through the gloves to the screen.
The Boulder-based company behind the Agloves says that since the whole glove is knitted with its unique silver yarn they are able to work even if the wearer’s fingertips lose conductivity, when they are too cold or dry for example. In such cases the rest of the hand is able to pick up the slack and allow the bioelectricity to travel from other areas on the hand, through the glove to the fingertips to maintain a connection.
Also, because the Agloves provide full 10-finger functionality, users are able to type using full QWERTY onscreen keyboards like that found on the iPad, or do four-finger swipes. Oh, and they should also keep your hands warm.

The Agloves are available now for US$17.99 a pair.