Turn anything into a touch-screen, with new technology from Portugal

Portuguese company Displax has come up with a novel way of turning virtually any surface into a touch-screen, with a plastic film which has multi-touch sensing.

Touch-screen is the popular new interface which by-passes the need for keyboards or other inputs, and allows the user to communicate with any device using just its screen and their grubby mitts. Seen on most new smart-phone handsets, and of course pretty much everything Apple has released in the last couple of years, it has til now been limited to being part of the device - but no longer.

Displax's polymer film is thinner than paper, and can be applied directly to any surface, turning that surface into a touch-screen display. The film has a matrix of wires embedded in it which enable it to pick up the tiny electrical impulses in a touch, and register up to 16 touches on a 50-inch screen. The location of the touch is then passed to a computer for processing.

The multitouch skin, as the company is calling it, means that any surface can be used as an interactive display - from tiny 7 inch screens to huge areas of up to 3 meters (diagonal). The uses for such technology are many, from retro-fitting a touchscreen onto a standard LCD monitor, to turning an entire shop window into an interactive display which multiple users can interact with at any time.

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