24 July This spray turns any surface into a touch-screen
In near future smartphones and tablets won’t be the only gadgets we control by touch. With just a can of spray paint, researchers can turn flat surfaces of any shape or size into touchpads.
The technique relies on electrodes attached to an object coated with any slightly conductive material. While not as precise as smartphone touch-screen technology, the resulting touchpads are still accurate enough to allow basic control functions, such as using a slider or pushing a button. The technique is known as electric field tomography and uses an array of electrodes to detect the position where the touch occurred.
The goal of this technology, named Electrick by its inventors from Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, is to enable touch sensing on everything. This way, the engineers can enable touch control in existing pieces of furniture, make a touch-controlled steering wheel, or enable someone to turn on the lights in their apartment by simply tapping the wall.
Source: https://www.livescience.com/59278-turn-any-flat-surface-into-touchpad.html