TempTouch: A novel touch sensor using temperature controllers for surface based textile displays

Abstract

In this paper we propose a new technology of touch sensitive textile displays that can detect touch without adding additional sensors to a thermochromic inks and peltier semi-conductor display system. Without any changes to the hardware of the display, we present a method to modify the existing temperature controllers of pelter elements to detect impulse temperature transients that are caused through touch. Using this method, the textile display can become a touch sensitive interactive textile display. We present the results of this system and two application prototypes that enhance simple table cloths into ubiquitously becoming a tic-tac-toe gaming platform and an interactive drawing pad with touch sensing. In addition, our user evaluations to observe the robustness and the performance of the system indicate that the system is detects touch at acceptably high speeds. In addition, the system performance is independent of the ambient temperature and depends mainly on the temperature of the finger. © 2013 ACM.