Researchers Develop Multi-Touch Sensor That Can Be Cut

 Gadgets  

Researchers at the MIT Media Lab and the Max Planck Institutes have created a foldable, cuttable multi-touch sensor that works even when you cut it, allowing multi-touch input in a wide variety of configurations.

Conventional electronic components and devices cannot be cut to customize their size and shape in an ad-hoc manner. Rigid substrates are hard to cut, components are too expensive to be discarded and cutting irreversibly damages the electronic circuits.

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In contrast, people have always cut traditional materials like fabric wood and leather to tailor them to their specific needs. At home, people wrap packages with material, which is cut to shape; they cut protective films to cover books and devices of various sizes; and they create artistic shapes in paper crafts.

Now, a team of researchers has developed printed electronic components and devices can easily be tailored to a custom shape and size by cutting. This is possible because substrates are very thin and flexible, and printouts are cheap.

So far other printed devices have adopted mainly the circuit designs from conventional electronics.  The researchers from the Max Planck Institute for Informatics and the MIT Media Lab have created new patterns for the printed circuits that allow the electronics to work even after they are cut.

The team of Simon Olberding, Nan-Wei Gong, John Tiab, Joseph A. Paradiso and Jürgen Steimle write in their paper:

Our vision is that printed sensors will be so inexpensive that multi-touch sensing capability will become an inherent part of the material. For instance, manufacturers of protective foils will offer a product line that features multi-touch sensing. Paper manufacturers will offer paper, cardboard or adhesive labels, which have the printed multi-touch sensor embedded. Manufacturers of wooden boards will offer boards that feature the sensor. The user buys the material in one of several standard sizes and then cuts it to the desired size and shape, using tools such as scissors, razors, saws, or laser cutters. This very direct physical manipulation seamlessly integrates with existing practices for customization, prototyping and crafting.

They made their proof-of-concept prototypes with conductive inkjet printing. In contrast to larger-scale roll-toroll processing, this allowed the researchers to easily experiment with different designs without a complex setup. They used silver ink to print conductive traces and electrodes on photo paper using an off-the-shelf inkjet printer.

The circuit layouts used in the printed sheets were inspired by topology and coding theory. To test their concepts, the researchers created multi-touch sensing devices with their methods.  Makers are sure to adopt this new method before it hits the mainstream.

Future work will address other printed components and devices, including active ones, and show how these can be made robust for desired shape adaptations and against undesired damages.

SOURCE  Embodied Interaction

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