ZeroTouch
 
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ZeroTouch CHI 2012 press: Slashdot, PC World (+ YouTube), The Batt.

AUSTIN, TX. -- The Texas A&M Interface Ecology Lab introduces the latest generation of the high fidelity ZeroTouch™ Sensor for multi-touch and free-air interaction at the Interactivity exhibition of the ACM CHI human-computer interaction conference (i433 through 5/12/2012). ZeroTouch is a disruptive technology that brings the body into human-centered computing, enabling new forms of expressive, yet precise and powerful interactivity. ZeroTouch turns any display or any area into a multi-touch surface. The latest ZeroTouch sensor's data transfer rate is 8 times faster than before, enabling construction of sensors of any practical size. ZeroTouch is the highest performance and potentially most cost effective large scale multi-touch sensor currently available. When integrated into a 42" television, ZeroTouch is expected to add as little as $500 to cost at mass production introduction. Meanwhile, development kits are available to a limited number of early adopting researchers at somewhat higher costs. ZeroTouch has been developed with support from the Human-Centered Computing program of the National Science Foundation.

ZeroTouch research is undertaken with support from the Human-Centered Computing program of the National Science Foundation. PSOC components are donated by Cypress Semiconductor.

The Interface Ecology Lab exhibit features one ZeroTouch integrated with a 55" LCD, heralding a new era of responsive televisions. Also featured are three ZeroTouch sensors for eSports competition, two of them integrated with pen-based computing, for Pen-In-Hand Command. Another pen + multi-touch sensor drives Embodied InfoComposer, a single display groupware for helping people curate more connected and rich collections than those afforded by Pintrest. Zooming Bookmarker uses ZeroTouch to bring multi-touch into Google's Chrome browser. The free-air interaction of intangibleCanvas, reminiscent of Minority Report and Iron Man, invites attendees to collaborate in a painting space.

Zerotouch is a point-to-point visual hull sensing technology, meaning it uses hundreds of modulated infrared sensors and several infrared LEDs to create a series of invisible light beams that cross the screen. When these beams are interrupted, it means something has touched the screen, and we can visualize the interruption of the beams to reconstruct the visual hull of any objects inside the sensor frame.

ZeroTouch™ is a trademark of Andruid Kerne, Jon Moeller, and The Interface Ecology Lab.

publications

Moeller, J. and Kerne, A., ZeroTouch: An Optical Multi-Touch and Free-Air Interaction Architecture, Proc. CHI 2012, 2165-2174 [23%]. Best Paper Honorable Mention. http://dx.doi.org/10.1145/2207676.2208368 [video]
Moeller, J. and Kerne, A., ZeroTouch: A Zero-Thickness Optical Multi-Touch Force Field, Interactivity Exhibit, Proc CHI 2011 EA, 1165-1170 [46%]. http://dx.doi.org/10.1145/1979742.1979710 [video]
Moeller, J., Lupfer, N., Hamilton, B., Lin, H., Kerne, A., intangibleCanvas: Free-Air Finger Painting on a Projected Canvas, Proc CHI 2011 EA, 1615-1620 [46%]. http://dx.doi.org/10.1145/1979742.1979817
Moeller, J., Kerne, A., Scanning FTIR: Unobtrusive Multi-Touch Sensing through Waveguide Transmissivity Imaging, Proc ACM Tangible, Embedded and Embodied Interaction (TEI) 2010, 73-76 [34%]. http://dx.doi.org/10.1145/1709886.1709900