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Next Big Thing – liquid touch sensors

Disney Research's new technology Touche takes touchscreens to a whole new level with liquid touch and body interfaces

Watery smartphones? Sounds dangerous.

Touche is touch sensitive tech that’s like the capacitive display on your smartphone but has tons of applications – from rigging up your doorknob to know when you’re grasping it with your whole hand or shutting the door with one finger to passing electrodes through water with Touche recognising when there’s a fingertip below the surface and when you’re whole hand is submerged.

Clever – but when will I use it?

The Disney/ Carnegie Mellon team has come up with loads of cool uses – from an alt click gesture on smartphones where you pinch the back of the handset as well as the screen to bring up menus to body controlled MP3 players. Tap your arm or press two fingers together to send pre-programmed frequencies to the gadget so it knows when you want to skip a track or control the volume – it might not need a screen, and you won’t be trailing wires.

I want a go, I want a go.

Fraid you can’t as this is just a research bod’s pipe dream for now although here’s hoping some top dogs at Apple or Samsung want to get involved with Disney Research’s crazy ideas. Read the whole damn research paper over at Disney Research or watch the vid below for more futuristic applications and experiments – closing the door will never be the same again.

 

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Profile image of Dan Grabham Dan Grabham Editor-in-Chief

About

Dan is Editor-in-chief of Stuff, working across the magazine and the Stuff.tv website.  Our Editor-in-Chief is a regular at tech shows such as CES in Las Vegas, IFA in Berlin and Mobile World Congress in Barcelona as well as at other launches and events. He has been a CES Innovation Awards judge. Dan is completely platform agnostic and very at home using and writing about Windows, macOS, Android and iOS/iPadOS plus lots and lots of gadgets including audio and smart home gear, laptops and smartphones. He's also been interviewed and quoted in a wide variety of places including The Sun, BBC World Service, BBC News Online, BBC Radio 5Live, BBC Radio 4, Sky News Radio and BBC Local Radio.

Areas of expertise

Computing, mobile, audio, smart home

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