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Section: New Software and Platforms
WhichFingers
WhichFingers: Identifying Fingers on Touch Surfaces and Keyboards using Vibration Sensors
Keywords: Interaction - HCI
Scientific Description: HCI researchers lack low-latency and robust systems to support the design and development of interaction techniques using finger identification. We developed a low-cost prototype using piezo-based vibration sensors attached to each finger. By combining the events from an input device with the information from the vibration sensors we demonstrate how to achieve low-latency and robust finger identification. Our prototype was evaluated in a controlled experiment, using two keyboards and a touchpad, showing single-touch recognition rates of 98.2% for the keyboard and 99.7% for the touchpad, and 94.7% for two simultaneous touches. These results were confirmed in an additional laboratory-style experiment with ecologically valid tasks. Last we present new interaction techniques made possible using this technology.
Functional Description: WhichFingers consists in a hardware and a software components.
The hardware component consists of five Minisense 100 vibration sensors attached to each finger. The sensors use flexible PVDF piezoelectric polymer film loaded by a mass to offer high sensitivity to detect contact vibrations. They produce a voltage as large as 90V depending on the intensity of the shock or vibration. The five sensors are plugged into a micro-controller and sends the raw values to the host computer at 1000 Hz.
The software component monitors low-level interaction touch and key events, and declares the vibration sensor that created the highest voltage as the finger that produced the input event.