Flextouch: Enabling large-scale interaction sensing beyond touchscreens using flexible and conductive materials

Y Wang, J Zhou, H Li, T Zhang, M Gao… - Proceedings of the …, 2019 - dl.acm.org
Y Wang, J Zhou, H Li, T Zhang, M Gao, Z Cheng, C Yu, S Patel, Y Shi
Proceedings of the ACM on interactive, mobile, wearable and ubiquitous …, 2019dl.acm.org
In this paper, we present FlexTouch, a technique that enables large-scale interaction
sensing beyond the spatial constraints of capacitive touchscreens using passive low-cost
conductive materials. This is achieved by customizing 2D circuit-like patterns with an array of
conductive strips that can be easily attached to the sensing nodes on the edge of the
touchscreen. FlexTouch requires no hardware modification, and is compatible with various
conductive materials (copper foil tape, silver nanoparticle ink, ITO frames, and carbon paint) …
In this paper, we present FlexTouch, a technique that enables large-scale interaction sensing beyond the spatial constraints of capacitive touchscreens using passive low-cost conductive materials. This is achieved by customizing 2D circuit-like patterns with an array of conductive strips that can be easily attached to the sensing nodes on the edge of the touchscreen. FlexTouch requires no hardware modification, and is compatible with various conductive materials (copper foil tape, silver nanoparticle ink, ITO frames, and carbon paint), as well as fabrication methods (cutting, coating, and ink-jet printing). Through a series of studies and illustrative examples, we demonstrate that FlexTouch can support long-range touch sensing for up to 4 meters and everyday object presence detection for up to 2 meters. Finally, we show the versatility and feasibility of FlexTouch through applications such as body posture recognition, human-object interaction as well as enhanced fitness training experiences.
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