A touchscreen is a touchscreen is a touchscreen, right? Apparently not as you discover to your own amazement and wonder with TapSense screen technology, where Carnegie Mellon’s Human Computer Interaction Institute manage to conjure, enabling your device to tell the difference between different types of taps through the use of a microphone and touchscreen display. Chris Harrison is the brains behind TapSense, and it is no wonder either, considering this is the very same person who delivered Omnitouch to the world. Basically, this technology “doubles the bandwidth” so to speak where touch interaction is concerned. Perhaps a video of it in action after the jump would make for a better explanation.Whenever a microphone is attached to a touchscreen, CMU scientists proved that they are able to tell the difference between the tap of a fingertip, the pad of the finger, a fingernail and a knuckle. This will definitely result in richer touchscreen interactions, and I can already think of some zany finger tapping games with this. Imagine taking shortcuts when composing a text message, where capitalizing letters involve tapping with your fingernail, making it far easier and faster.
Fingers aren’t the only thing this is good at, as the system is also able to sense different tools such as foam, multiple pens types, and brushes. No idea on when it will show up in real world applications, but soon would be what we’re hoping for – in the iPhone 6, perhaps?
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