Squeezing the Sandwich: A Mobile Pressure-Sensitive Two-Sided Multi-Touch Prototype

Georg Essl, University of Michigan
Michael Rohs, Deutsche Telekom Laboratories, TU Berlin
Sven Kratz, Deutsche Telekom Laboratories, TU Berlin


Abstract

Two-sided pressure input is common in everyday interactions such as grabbing,
sliding, twisting, and turning an object held between thumb and index finger.
We describe and demonstrate a research prototype which allows for two-sided
multitouch sensing with continuous pressure input at interactive rates and we
explore early ideas of interaction techniques that become possible with this
setup. The advan-tage of a two-sided pressure interaction is that it enables
high degree-of-freedom input locally. Hence rather com-plex, yet natural
interactions can be designed using little finger motion and device space.