Touch-sensing technology born of CMU researchers grabs companies' interest
David Ashi
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It took two years for researchers at Carnegie Mellon University to develop technology that can add touch-sensing capabilities to everyday objects and surfaces like toys, steering wheels and walls, but it did not take long for companies to express interest in commercializing the product.
The technology, called Electrick, might one day be used to enhance car dashboards and steering wheels; build light switch capabilities directly into walls; or create three-dimensional, touch-sensitive organs that doctors can use to practice surgery.
Or perhaps it will be used for recreational purposes, like making more versatile those ever-changing escape room attractions where visitors solve clues to sleuth their way out as the clock is ticking.
“We’re always thinking about the end application and how openly it can be used to make people’s lives better, even if it’s as simple as bringing delight to objects or a more pleasurable user experience,” said Chris Harrison, CMU assistant professor of human-computer interaction and director of the future interfaces group.
“It doesn’t have to make you live longer … we want to make life better in the living of life.”
The future interfaces group at the Human-Computer Interaction Institute has been working for several years developing and refining Electrick. The process enables touch input on objects of different shapes and sizes by making them electrically conductive through spray painting, casting and molding — sort of creating a touch screen where the product is sprayed.
Electrick uses a software algorithm to respond to touch by measuring changes in the flow of electricity across an item’s surface. Placing electrodes on everyday objects makes them conductive and thereby able to measure the changes in voltage caused by the press of a finger.
After a presentation at the Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems last month in Denver, the process is attracting the attention of companies looking to partner with the lab.
Yang Zhang, a second-year doctoral student and one of the researchers behind Electrick, said the lab is in talks to collaborate with five or six companies — some from Pittsburgh and some from beyond Pennsylvania and outside of the United States. He has signed non-disclosure agreements that prohibit him from naming them.
Cindy Chepanoske, a manager at CMU’s Center for Technology Transfer and Enterprise Creation — which oversees the process of licensing university research to the business community — said she could not comment specifically on Electrick’s stage in the licensing process.
In 2016, the center filed 256 patents, issued 55 patents and created 8 new spinoff companies, serving 458 inventors total. Readers may be familiar with an older spinoff company from CMU, language learning software Duolingo, which launched in 2011.
“Part of our goal here is dissemination,” Ms. Chepanoske said. “We want to enable our researchers, to help connect them with companies that can take them to the next step.”
According to Mr. Zhang, the Electrick process could lend itself to a variety of business applications ranging from recreation and experimentation to infrastructure and manufacturing.
For example, he said, potential consumers can play around with the technology on their own, while industries can integrate the touch sensing into products such as cars, furniture or cell phone cases and enable users to enjoy touch input in these objects without any prior training or calibration.
Mr. Harrison said Electrick was not designed to be a replacement for conventional touch screens, and has yet to be market tested for durability in long-term usage.
“We’ve done the research to show that it works, but we haven’t done research to show it’s viable in the real world,” he said, adding that the next step of the commercialization process involves the expertise of industrial research labs to bring the technology to the masses.
Daniel Ashbrook, assistant professor at the Rochester Institute of Technology in Rochester, New York and director of its Future Everyday Technology Lab, said that the touch technology — which he explored at Denver’s CHI conference — presents interesting questions about interaction.
Mr. Ashbrook said he wondered about getting feedback from “invisible interfaces,” as using a touch screen on a smartphone yields immediate feedback but adding touch sensing to surfaces like walls and books makes it harder to see and possibly to use.
For example, he said challenges may arise when touch capacity is added to part of a wall and then painted over, leaving users unsure about how to interact with it.
Still, he said technologies like Electrick are an example of a future where individuals are not constrained by screen technology but able to interact more naturally with the world around them.
Carnegie Mellon is not the only producer of touch sensing technology in the city. Dawar Technologies, formed in 1883 as a commercial printer and headquartered in Pittsburgh, has become one of the country’s leading touch screen manufacturers. The company serves markets ranging from aerospace to military.
David Ashi, Dawar’s National Director of Sales and Marketing, said touch screen technology is applicable and valuable in a wide range of industries, and the majority of the company’s customers are moving toward touch screen displays because of their aesthetic and functional value.
“Any place there’s a display that requires human interaction, you can have a touch