TapSense Touchscreen Technology Can Figure Out What’s Touching the Screen
While most of us are happy with the two most common touchscreen options on tablets and smartphones – touching with our finger and with a capacitive stylus – TapSense believes there’s value in recognizing many other “taps”. They claim to have technology that can sense whether you’re tapping with your finger, your knuckle or your finger nail using an external microphone.
A use case would include not only facilitating normal operations when using your finger but bringing up a context menu when tapping with your finger nail or performing a different operation when tapping with one of your knuckles.
TapSense boasts a 95% accuracy rating with the technology, though practical implementation might not be as simple when it comes to OEM designs. A microphone would need to be able to pick the sound up no matter where you tap.
Usually the primary microphone is on the bottom of the device with the secondary microphone is usually on the top, side or back of the device. TapSense believes they can achieve real-world results, though we don’t believe OEMs will be too thrilled by the idea just yet. For now, everyone’s fine with buttons (or software controls in the case of Ice Cream Sandwich). [via]