Making arbitrary objects touch sensitive.

[swestrup]

Sensitive Object is a firm that has invented one of those so-astoundingly-obvious-why-didn't-I-think-of-it technologies. By attaching a pair of ultra-sensitive accelerometers to an arbitrary ridid object, they can detect where on the surface it has been touched, making most any kind of object a touch sensitive device. I can think of literally hundreds of uses for such a thing. The big question in my mind is, how complex can the geometry of the rigid object be? Can a carved candlestick or decorateve sculpture be used as a touch device yet, or is that asking too much right now?

Comments

[sps.livejournal.com]

So long as it acts rigid at the frequencies you care about, what's the problem? There are the same six degrees of freedom in any case - or do I misunderstand?

[swestrup]

Well, how do you isolate a point with six degrees of freedom using only 2 sensors? Wouldn't 3 be the absolute minimum for a non-planar object?

As for your other point, hmmm. You're right. If you get a 3-space point of contact, you can do your own geometrical calculations to figure out which virtual button was touched. I dunno why that wasn't obvious to me yesterday.

[sps.livejournal.com]

It depends what the sensors are, of course, but my guess would be either (a) you actually don't, or (b) each of them does

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It depends what the sensors are, of course, but my guess would be either (a) you actually don't, or (b) each of them does <dx,dy,dz> at a different point....