We’re all familiar with touch screen smartphones, tablets, music players, and now it’s time for touch screen tables, mirrors, glass, floor projections, bar surfaces, and much more to form the next generation league for touch screens. These surfaces remain the same in dimensions, with the addition of a thin computing layer over them. Multiple users can then manipulate the touch screen and work on applications, presentations, and a wide array of computing activities.
Microsoft was the first market player that came up with the concept of multi touch tables way back in 2007. They called the first touch table, which was aimed for commercial use in public settings. Such multi touch screens are designed to interact with several people, all at the same time, therefore, allowing people to share information more quickly and conveniently.
When we particularly talk about interactive tables, the first thing that strikes the mind is that tables if placed in public places, offices, or even homes, will be victim to high traffic, and therefore, to make the technology a success, two things become imperative- resilience and performance.
Horizontal surfaces will always take abuse, sometimes accidental, and sometimes malicious. This is the reason that their screen needs to have the capacity to perform optimally even when there is high degree of wear and tear. Also, the second problem, which they might face, is that of false touch. Tables are surfaces where people will rest on their elbows, place cups and plates, and do a whole lot of other stuff, which might give a delusional sense of touch to the device.
These devices are deigned to overcome both these problems. On the one hand these surfaces are rough and tough, and resistive to wear and tear, and second, the touch technology enables the surface to differentiate between the various kinds of touch, without interfering its use by several people simultaneously.
Rigorous research and advancements are already in process to make this technology more affordable, and also make it resilient to all sort of wear and tear, including liquid ingression, and other dust related problems.
Inevitably, touch screen interactive surfaces are drawing more and more people because of its high collaborative capacities. It is rather convenient for users to club around a table in board room meetings, restaurants, and home for exchanging useful information with one another. Touch screen features like pinch zooms, rotating, pinch scrolling, can be highly beneficial and also allow simultaneous users to take advantage from it.
Imagine not having laptops, and tablets, but simply working on table tops by sliding across your fingers, pinching, squeezing, text, images, and graphics of all types. The technology is already being showcased by many businesses that have got touch interactive screens installed, and soon these will also be available for home use at affordable prices.
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