NYU Researchers Create Cheap, Flexible Pressure-Based Interface 55
Al writes "A super-cheap, thin and flexible touch interface developed by researchers at New York University and could be used to add touch sensing to all sorts of gadgets and devices. It measures a change in electrical resistance when a person or object applies different pressure. The "Inexpensive Multi-Touch Pressure Acquisition Devices (IMPAD)" consists of two sheets of plastic containing parallel lines of electrodes. The sheets are arranged so that the electrodes cross, creating a grid and each intersection acts as a pressure sensor. The sheets are also covered with a layer of force-sensitive resistor (FSR) ink, a type of ink that has microscopic bumps on its surface. So, when something coated in the ink is pressed, the bumps move together and touch, conducting electricity."
Re:Presssure? (Score:5, Funny)
You know, because it's preciousss.
Re:Presssure? (Score:5, Informative)
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LEPs where are you? (Score:2, Interesting)
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They're about 10 years out from having a marketable product.
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Not only that, but I've designed products using a touch pad just like this back in 1989! It was a two-dimensional touch pad with a 68hc11 microcontroller in it which outputted MIDI to a synthesizer. The location of your touch determined the pitch and sound and the velocity of your touch determined the amplitude and the pressure afterwards determined the low frequency oscillator modulation. See a funny video of me playing it at http://www.turnercom.com/compositions-etc/Kit-100.html [turnercom.com]
--jeffk++
I for one welcome... (Score:1, Redundant)
Hey, how soon til I get my cheap, touchscreen capable netbook with 10 hours of battery life?
When? Fall. (Score:3, Informative)
Late fall. Rumor is Apple may introduce a 10" iPod Touch, which for most purposes is a touchscreen netbook.
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Yeah, but if its by Apple, it won't be cheap (which is part of the "netbook" definition)
Re:I for one welcome... (Score:4, Insightful)
Sorry for running off topic...
I question the durability of these printable touchpads. They can't replace anything if they wear out. No-one will be replacing their touchpads. If I have to ship my laptop/phone in for a few days every other month it better save me 50% of the cost of the whole product so I can buy 2.
Yay! inexpensive... (Score:3, Funny)
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The power of suggestion (Score:2)
"could be used to add touch sensing to all sorts of gadgets and devices."
He resisted the urge to add "(hint, hint)".
Re:The power of suggestion (Score:5, Funny)
Exactly. Think about clothing...
"Hey baby, check out my new touch-sensitive digital pants. Let me see if you're wearing one of those touch-sensitive shirts..." (SLAP!) "OK, I guess it's VERY touch sensitive..."
And this differs... how .....? (Score:3, Interesting)
And this differs from the for over 20-years available touchpads, how?
Resistive papers have been used for oh, 70 years now, ever since the Western Union Teledeltos fax machines, circa 1938.
I recall my father using those sheets to simulate heat flow inside the CDC 8600. A ten cent analog computer of sorts.
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http://www.technologyreview.com/video/?vid=290&a=f [technologyreview.com]
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Okay!
Next time I want to make a sloppy kindergarden finger-paint drawing I'm so there!
X-Y sensing pads have a long and dismal history-- They work fine for the first day but the slightest bit of moisture or grunge or wear and they go downhill in a hurry.
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Okay!
Next time I want to make a sloppy kindergarden finger-paint drawing I'm so there!
That's just an example application, demonstrating the pressure sensitivity and multi-touch capability of the technology. The technology is not exclusively limited to that demonstration and I know you are a smart enough person to see through that straw man argument you are putting up there.
X-Y sensing pads have a long and dismal history-- They work fine for the first day but the slightest bit of moisture or grunge or wear and they go downhill in a hurry.
Care to cite some sources? I have been following multi-touch technology for a while and this is the first demonstration I've seen of a non-capacitance based (iphone is capacitance) non-camera based multi-touch interface
Re:And this differs... how .....? (Score:4, Insightful)
They also bring up an excellent point towards the end of the article where they point out one of the biggest challenges is going to be integrating this thing into a display. On the plus side I imagine it should be fairly straightforward to layer it over a piece of glass, but I'd be worried about scratching and such as any damage to the top grid would ruin the pressure sensitivity around that area and who knows what the software driving the thing would interpret that as.
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Hang on... inexpensive and flexible? The possibilities go quite far beyond merely replacing existing hardware functionality, and I don't think people are fully appreciating this.
Durability of touch-surfaces has always been a concern, but if it's so cheap then why not have replacable touch-surface film? Whenever the surface gets a bit scuffed or unresponsive, just replace it yourself - no fuss.
Extending the idea, why not have printed surfaces, with different surfaces for different applications? Just print
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Pressure Based? (Score:2, Funny)
Ha ha! (Score:1, Funny)
This technology will be a huge leap forward for butt-print analysis.
Did you get that thing I set ya?
Not really new (Score:2)
I don't see why this is any more commercially viable than existing capacitive and resistive touch pads from Synaptics and Alps. It's not just the touch pad cost that matters (and a capacitive pad is cheaper to make than any resistive design), but the interpolation and calibration processing cost. This proposed system requires a lot of interpolation, meaning CPU power. A Synaptics touch pad (for example) draws a few 10s to a few 100s of microamps in operation, using a cheap embedded CPU...
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If you had read the article (I know, I know, it's slashdot), you'd have found out two crucial differences: it's pressure sensitive, meaning it outputs data about how hard it's being touched, not just yes or no, which the cheap capacitive touchpads you're referring to don't do, and it works with any pressure source, such as a stylus or a gloved finger, which capacitive touchpads can't do. Capacitive touchpads depend on the electrical properties of the human finger. Resistive touchpads don't.
As an added bon
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I bought my ex a tablet, years ago. She was an artist, and loved the thing. It was resistive, not capacitive. Try again.
I own a notebook. The capacitive touchpad has never shown the least signs of being pressure sensitive. I don't know what software you've used, but the software I use has never so much as attempted to respond to different pressures. Maybe you think that the electrical changes induced by pressing more skin to the surface of the device are responding to the pressure? It's not. It's re
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The Intellivision Disc LIVES! (Score:2)
Wow, these guys re-invented the little plastic sheet you had to replace every now in then in the Intellivision controller because the buttons and disc eventually wore through the circuits. Still the best controller ever, but... dang!
Advanced Applications (Score:2)
Hard to make this transparent and cheap (Score:1)
This is a neat piece of technology. It looks to me like they've used a grid of electrodes + FSR ink to create an array of force sensing resistors.
I'm guessing: isolate a pair of electrodes (an X and a Y), and measure the resistance between them to get a reading of the pressure applied at that point. Scan the entire pad to get a pressure map.
This would be really cool for a touch screen interface, except for the fact that IT WOULD BE TOTALLY OPAQUE! The FSR ink is black. Maybe a thin enough layer could be use
No more whiteboards (Score:2, Interesting)
If I were a betting woman, I'd put money that this technology is going to replace white-boards and chalkboards at universities everywhere. No more having to deal with dried up markers or missing chalk.
Robot skin (Score:5, Interesting)
Looks like this could go a long way towards providing some very effective "Skin" for a robot, to sense contact all over.
-Taylor
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I agree. What I find most interesting about this is the robotic applications for touch sensitivity and dexterous manipulation.
If robots can "feel" the world, vision would not be nearly so important.
Touch sensors that are as cheap and functional as the one mentioned here will IMHO revolutionize robotic manipulation, and in turn, manufacturing and deployment of manufactured goods in unstructured settings (like doing plumbing).
Insects do really well relying a lot on touch.
While I don't follow that field very c
May the FSR ink be with you... (Score:1)