FlexTouch: Enabling Large-Scale Interaction Sensing Beyond Touchscreens Using Flexible and Conductive Materials

(IMWUT ’19) YunTao Wang, JianYu Zhou, HanChuan Li, TengXiang Zhang, MinXuan Gao, ZhouLin Cheng, Chun Yu, Shwetak Patel, and YuanChun Shi
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).
[Paper]