Capacitive technology that allows us to physically interact with the touchscreen is not limited to just our fingers or fancy stylus. Hopefully, someone is getting the Nobel Prize because a researcher found that pastries also work with touchscreens, and with some clever baking techniques, an iPad is finally able to recognize your breakfast muffin.
Florian Heller, a postdoctoral researcher at the Center for Specialization for Digital Media at Hasselt University in Belgium, realized that the electric field of the capacitive layer of a touchscreen display could be altered by conductive materials other than human skin and metal. Baked goods, especially when taken out of the oven, have enough moisture and humidity to be electrically conductive, which is all that is needed for capacitive touchscreen interactions to be accepted.
But why does stopping at a touchscreen acknowledge the presence of a ripe good? In a recently published paper, id Muffidgets: Detecting and Identifying Edible Pastry Tangibles on Capacitive Touchscreens, Heller details a particular baking method he devised. The pastry itself (in this case, a muffin) was made using a standard recipe that included sunflower oil and water, but under the paper cups, circular baking wafers with notches were poured so that, after baking, each Be under the cuff. The touch points were left with a distinctive pattern.
Because capacitive touchscreens can recognize multiple points of touch at the same time, Heller was able to design a series of different footprint patterns that allow a device such as an iPad to convey different baked goods .
So why would anyone want to go through all this trouble? While research can realize some fun personalization opportunities (a message from your partner may start playing on your tablet during breakfast), there are some practical applications such as a way to identify the ingredients of a specific pastry. Using a touchpoint, such as simply dropping it down on the screen of your phone. As an informational tool, it can provide details on the calorie count of a pastry, the presence of animal products, or it can just trigger a link to the recipe, so if you really want to with your morning coffee If you enjoy mixed truth, then you can make it. When you’re erasing fat from the screen of your iPad, yourself at home later.
The detection of tangibles on capacitive touchscreens has received a lot of attention over the past decade. The current state of the art allows a capacitive touchscreen to detect and identify multiple touch lines based on a tangible, unique footprint of interconnected conductive elements. In most cases, this conductive material is either a metal or some carbon-based conductor, possibly integrated into a 3D printing process. The choice of conductive materials, however, is not limited to these technical elements. In this paper, we show how the concept of tangible identity on capacitive touchscreens can be transferred to pastries, creating a short-lived, food user interface. Identification and identification of specific pieces of pastry open applications in the field of entertainment, but also food safety.
Capacitive touchscreens can be tricked into recognizing touch from various sources using electrically conductive materials. It is a simple touchscreen stylus.
However, it works with all types of electrically conductive materials, and does not need to be conductive as a metal. For example, fresh muffins have sufficient humidity to be electrically conductive and can therefore be used to create a tangible one that produces three unique touches on the screen. These touches can then be used to identify the tangible on the screen and use it as an input controller.
