If the toe mouse
just wasn't grand enough for you, how about an entire floor
to practice your foot-based inputs on? Researchers at Potsdam's (that's in Germany, yo) Hasso Plattner Institut have put together a multitouch floor that recognizes individual users by their shoe pattern and responds to such universally familiar actions as stomping your feet and tapping your toes. The so-called multitoe project works on the basis of frustrated total internal reflection
, which allows it to ignore inactive users while being precise enough to recognize foot postures
. Follow us after the break to see this back-projected proof of concept in action.
[Photo by Kay Herschelmann]