Touching and swiping on your smartphone or tablet is so 2011. What if you could select a new song, craft a text message, or launch an app without ever touching your gadget?
Disney Research has stepped away from creating animatronic creatures to investigate more complex uses for touch-based technology, and it landed on a system known as Touché.
A five-minute video (below) details some of the uses for Touché, but one of the more interesting options is using the body as a touch screen of sorts. Rather than pulling your MP3 player out of your pocket, for example, simply touch your finger to your palm to advance a playlist or increase the volume.
The user would likely be wearing a wristwatch-esque sensor to pick up movement, according to a paper from Disney researchers Munehiko Sato, Ivan Poupyrev, and Chris Harrison. The trio recently won Best Paper at the 2012 ACM SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems.
"For example, making a 'shh' gesture with index finger touching to the lips, could put the phone into silent mode," they wrote. "Putting the hands together, forming a book-like gesture, could replay voicemails."
Another somewhat hilarious (though possibly traumatizing) option the researchers laid out for Touché was "food training." The technology works with liquids, so let's say you were trying to get junior to eat his cereal with a spoon. Did he stick his finger in the bowl? A buzzer signals that he's doing it wrong. Chopsticks? Nope, another jarring buzzer. Trying with a spoon, however, prompts a soothing tone to signal that he is eating the cereal correctly.
Touché could also help people use their doorknobs as an away message in the office, researchers said. Are you on the phone? Anyone who touches your doorknob could see a "Do Not Disturb" message illuminate on the door. If you step away, meanwhile, different pressure could produce different messages - a light touch means "Back in 5" but closing the door with a full grip on the doorknob signals that you're "Gone for the Night."
In the home, how about sensors in your couch? Sit down and the TV turns on. Lights dim the longer you watch, with the TV and lights turning off completely should you fall asleep.
Touché is still in the concept phase, so touch screens are likely here to stay for the foreseeable future. But the researchers said they were inspired by Mark Weiser and his 1991 "disappearing computer" theory, or the idea that actual gadgets will fade into the background. For that to become a reality, however, "completely new interaction technologies are required, and we hope that this work contributes to the emergence of future ubiquitous computing environments," the Disney team said.