Multi Touch Floor Solution Demoed

A group of researchers over at the Hasso Plattner Institute in Germany have developed a prototype multi-touch digital interactive floor which is capable of allowing users to interact with the digital floor by just using the toe.

The intelligent floor, which has been designed by the team headed by human-computer interaction Professor Patrick Baudisch, is also capable of sensing foot pressure and can also recognise users by their foot size.

The Design Blog, which first reported the amazing technology, mentioned that the digital floor, which reminds us of one of Microsoft's table-top "Surface"computers, has the potential of being used in space and for larger-than-life gaming.

According to the demo video posted on the Design Blog, the floor can ignore the foot pressure of unknown users while recognise those who have registered. It also comes with a multi-touch QWERTY virtual keyboard which lets users to type with their toes.

An article posted in the New Scientist magazine revealed that the computer-floor has been developed using a 0.5-millimetre-thick sheet of silicone lying on an 8-millimetre-thick layer of clear acrylic, which have been placed on a thick sheet of glass to provide stability.

The screen is based on frustrated total internal reflection (FTIR) and was unveiled at the Association for Computing Machinery 2010 Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems in Atlanta, Georgia.