ShiftTouch: Sheet-type Interface Extending Capacitive Touch Inputs with Minimal Screen Occlusion

We present ShiftTouch, a sheet-type passive interface that provides multiple inputs for capacitive touch surfaces with minimal screen occlusion. It consists of a conductive layer and a masking layer that partially insulates the conductive one. ShiftTouch uses multiple linear electrodes to control the fine touch position. The touch input is triggered under the electrodes when several adjacent electrodes are grounded simultaneously. Although each input area shares some electrodes with neighboring input areas, the touch surface can identify the inputs from each input area by detecting the slight displacement of the touch position. Our interface is simple yet effective in implementing multiple input areas while reducing screen occlusion compared to existing approaches using finger-sized electrodes.

1. Kaori Ikematsu*, Kunihiro Kato* (*co-1st authors). ShiftTouch: Extending Touchscreens with Passive Interfaces using Small Occluded Area for Discrete Touch Input. In Proceedings of the 17th International Conference on Tangible, Embedded and Embodied Interaction (TEI ’23), Article No. 11, pp.1–15. (2023). [DOI]

2. Kaori Ikematsu, Kunihiro Kato and Rei Kawakami. 2021. ShiftTouch: Sheet-type Interface Extending Capacitive Touch Inputs with Minimal Screen Occlusion. In Proceedings of the 34th Annual Symposium on User Interface Software and Technology (UIST’ 21). ACM, New York, NY, USA, pp. 86–88 [DOI]