#ALGORITHMS: "Touch-Enabling the Whole World"

Touché is a new multi-frequency technology that touch-enables the complete surface of any object--from household objects like door knobs to the human body itself--thereby allowing touch gestures to control your world. A smart door knob, for instance, can sense a one-finger touch, a two-finger pinch, an encircle gesture, and a grab gesture to enable "do not disturb," "lock," "unlock," or "open," respectively. Each gesture creates a capacitive signature and does not necessarily require a physical touch. Even the surface of a liquid--such as a smart fish tank or smart food bowl--can sense which implement is being used in it and responds with instructions for its use. You've got to watch this video (below) to grasp the range of uses for Touché: R. Colin Johnson



Disney demonstrates Touché with five example setups from different application domains and conduct experimental studies that show gesture classification accuracies of 99 percent are achievable with its technology.

Here is what Disney Research says about Touché: Touché is a new sensing technology that proposes a novel Swept Frequency Capacitive Sensing technique that can not only detect a touch event, but simultaneously recognize complex configurations of the human hands and body during touch interaction. This allows to significantly enhances touch interaction in a broad range of applications, from enhancing conventional touchscreens to designing interaction scenarios for unique use contexts and materials. For example, in our explorations we added complex touch and gesture sensitivity not only to computing devices and everyday objects, but also to the human body and liquids. Importantly, instrumenting objects and material with touch sensitivity is easy and straightforward: a single wire is sufficient to make objects and environments touch and gesture sensitive.
Further Reading