What If Every Surface Could Be a Touch Pad?

Imagine walking into your home and touching the wall to control any aspect of your smart home controls. This spray on technology will allow rapid prototyping to advance smart home technologies.

The future interfaces group made waves last year with their skintrack technology, which enabled humans to transform their own skin into a touch pad to control a phone or smartwatch. now, the group are expanding beyond only using skin as an interface, instead trialing the technology with absolutely anything and everything. for their ‘electrick’ project, the group have used conductive paint to turn virtually any surface into a touch pad, from a guitar to a play-doh snowman, and even a jell-o brain.

touch screens are cropping up more and more in every day life, but they all tend to be concentrated in small flat spaces such as smartphone screens, tablets or in kiosks. the future interfaces group sets out to bring touch technology to larger or irregular-shapes objects like walls, tools, or toys. the project works by spraying on conductive paint to the surface in question, then adding on electrodes and computing where the touch points are. a colorful top coat can also be added.