Right now pretty much all touch-sensitive surfaces we encounter are mostly screens, such as the displays on our smartphones, tablets, and so on. Sure, there are other inventions that use lasers and projectors, but it seems that those inventions could be overtaken thanks to work done by scientists at the Carnegie Mellon University.
The university’s Future Interfaces Group has recently shown off its latest research project which they are calling Electrick. It is essentially a spray that when sprayed upon any surface, it can turn it into a touch-sensitive surface. This means that you could spray all kinds of objects or even the walls of your home and create a touch-sensitive surface to interact with.
In the video above, the group demonstrates how you could spray the surface of an object like a guitar and give it touch controls that are determined by an accompanying app. This means that it is possible that in the future, guitar volume knob placements, tremolo arm, and more could no longer be fixed and could be adjusted to the player’s preference.
Another example was shown in which a car’s steering wheel was sprayed with carbon paint and with the attached electrodes, it turned the steering wheel into a giant gesture input device that users can use to interact with the car’s dashboard applications as well. When exactly we will see Electrick being used in the real world remains to be seen, but the researchers are saying that it is at least a year away from being ready for commercialisation.
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