Philips Entertaible: 45 Point Gaming Touchscreen

entertaible.jpg

Wow, big shout out to my buddy John, for showing me this.  Philips Research has developed a multipoint gaming touchscreen that can detect 45 touch points simultaneously that works with fingers as well as game pieces.  Perhaps the most impressive part is that it's all built around a 32 inch LCD screen, so the whole thing is only around 10cm (4 inches) tall.  Another interesting detail of the Entertaible is the technology used to determine touch locations, as it doesn't use any of the 3 most common methods.

The Philips Entertaible, however, is based on a series of infrared LEDs and photodiodes discretely mounted around the perimeter of an LCD screen.
Source: Philips Research Press Releases

Basically this thing detects finger placement like those obnoxious electronic door chimes they somtimes use in stores.  I wonder what kind of accuracy they can get out of that? 

One Minute IFA Preview: Philips Entertaible [techdigest.tv]
Philips Research:  Entertaible concept: combination of electronic gaming and traditional board games

Jeff Han's Multiple Touch Point Display, the stuff dreams are made of

For anyone who let out a resounding “Meh” after reading my Apple Table entry, check out this video. The video shows Jeff Han of New York University's Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences demonstrating a large touch screen display that is pressure sensitive and can accept multiple touch points simultaneously. This enables multiple fingers (or people!) to interact with the display at once. While some of the examples are a bit silly, they still start to expose the power of the interface. I wonder if Apple has something like this on some workbench somewhere? Even if they do, they should still snatch Jeff up before someone else does, this thing is impressive.

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