TapSense

TapSense can classify different types of finger input.

Different parts of the finger can be identified for use on touch surfaces

Spectrograms of our four finger input types. Once the audio data for the impact has been captured, our software processes it, extracting a series of time-independent acoustic features.

Having even a small set of input objects could be valuable. For instance, painting applications on conventional interactive surfaces typically use a palette-based color mode selection.

Mobile and Table prototype. Stethoscopes naturally provide a high level of environmental noise suppression. This allows impacts to be readily segmented from any background noise with a simple amplitude threshold.

Left: a directory of files; items can be opened or dragged using the traditional finger pad tap. Center: user alt-clicks a file with a knuckle tap, triggering a contextual menu. Right: User pad taps on the print option

To type a primary character, users can use their
finger pad as usual. To type an alt character, a finger tip is
used. Thus, users have access to the entire character set
without having to switch pages. To backspace, the user can
nail tap anywhere on the screen (i.e., no button necessary).