Disney's Touché

Hey, you could be using something in the future that was developed out of Disney Research. This is certainly something that could go beyond the capacitive touch screen that most of us are used to.

The new technology relies on "swept frequency capacitive sensing" capable of processing far more information than current touch sensors that monitor a single frequency to detect single and multiple finger movements. Touché can monitor multiple frequencies, allowing it to understand hand grasps, complex finger gestures, and body position such as when a user is covering her ears or uses his elbows to lean on a table.

 Touché can be used in almost any object imaginable because it requires just a single electrical conductor embedded into the object and then a wired or wireless connection to a sensor controller. Disney imagines you could have a Touché-enabled living room where you sit down on your sofa and the TV automatically turns on. As you get more comfortable and lean back to enjoy the show, your living room lights would dim. And if you become so comfortable that you fall asleep, the sensors in  your sofa would recognize this and shut down the TV for better rest. You could also put touch sensitivity into a doorknob that would lock based on how firmly you grasped the door handle, or even unlock with a "gesture password," a feature in use today in Android smartphones and upcoming Windows 8 PCs.

The mouse is pretty smart! I wonder if Apple knows about this? :)

Zz.