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'Multi-touch' is a human-computer interaction technique and the hardware devices that implement it. Multi-touch consists of a touch screen or touch tablet (touchpad) that recognizes multiple simultaneous touch points and software to interpret simultaneous touches. This frequently includes the position and pressure or degree of each touch point independently, which allows gestures and interaction with multiple fingers or hands (similar to chording) and can provide rich interaction (including direct manipulation) through intuitive gestures. Depending largely on their size, some multi-touch devices support more than one user on the same device simultaneously. One salient aspect of this technique is that it makes easy to zoom in or out in a Zooming User Interface with two fingers, thereby providing a more direct mapping than with a single-point device like a mouse^[1] or stylus.^[2]
Multi-touch has at least a 25 year history^[3], beginning in 1982, with pioneering work being done at the University of Toronto (multi-touch tablets) and Bell Labs (multi-touch screens). In July 2007, Apple made a move to register the word multi-touch as a trademark [1].

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See also

References

External links

See also

★ iPhone, iPod touch

★ Lemur Input Device

★ Microsoft Surface

★ reacTable

★ TouchLight

★ Natural User Interface

★ Tenori-on

References

1. Panning and zooming on a ZUI with a mouse
2. http://hcil.cs.umd.edu/trs/2004-20/2004-20.pdf
3. http://www.billbuxton.com/multitouchOverview.html

External links

★ An overview by researcher Bill Buxton of Microsoft Research

★ CityWall: A real world, large scale, non FTIR mutli-touch display

★ Multi-Touch Interaction Research @ NYU

★ Natural User Interface Group Open-source community focusing on natural interaction and multitouch research

★ Jeff Han narrated video at TED conference

★ Multi Touch latest news on Multi Touch Technology

★ MTC Open-Source multi-touch technology