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Comment by Animats | Hacker News Reader

Cute, but very low resolution. The paper describes sensing a 4x4 array. Multi-touch is possible, but fingers closer than 10cm can't be resolved. The paper doesn't say anything about ambient humidity. That will affect this approach. So will skin dryness.

It's nice, but not better than existing touchscreen technologies.

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You're missing the point. Currently capacitive touch interfaces require a grid of copper and an MCU. This new technique lets you add the interface to any object that will take a thin film spray, which is great! The same issues with false positive rejection from humidity and moisture and radio noise exist, but now we can add it to arbitrary objects like handles and such without busting ourselves integrating the copper loops into whatever device it is we're building. You can just spray the surface, calibrate, and go. Lots of great design space here.

It's better than existing technologies in the sense that you can put it on a vastly wider array of surfaces. This looks like a very early iteration; I expect the technique could be improved upon to yield higher accuracy and support for multiple touches. More electrodes, smarter electrode coordination, better conductor regularity, etc. could probably all help. Even without these things, it already seems quite useful.

Video made it look pretty decent in terms of resolution -- notice the author move his finger around and trace the line. This isn't like 16 points total.

While I agree with you that transparent touch screens are currently underutilized in the sex industry, this technology will enable things beyond your wildest dreams.

I'm sorry if I'm missing something, but did you mean to reply to a different post here? I don't quite see the relevance of what you're saying to anything that the original post covered.

Yes, OP said nothing about sex work. No, I am replying to the right post.

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