computing Computing is any goal-oriented activity requiring, benefiting from, or creating computing machinery. It includes the study and experimentation of algorithmic processes, and development of both hardware and software. Computing has scientific, ...

, multi-touch is technology that enables a surface (a

touchpad A touchpad or trackpad is a pointing device featuring a tactile sensor, a specialized surface that can translate the motion and position of a user's fingers to a relative position on the operating system that is made output to the screen. Touch ...

touchscreen A touchscreen or touch screen is the assembly of both an input ('touch panel') and output ('display') device. The touch panel is normally layered on the top of an electronic visual display of an information processing system. The display is ofte ...

) to recognize the presence of more than one point of contact with the surface at the same time. The origins of multitouch began at CERN, MIT,

University of Toronto The University of Toronto (UToronto or U of T) is a public research university in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, located on the grounds that surround Queen's Park. It was founded by royal charter in 1827 as King's College, the first institu ...

Carnegie Mellon University Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) is a private research university in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. One of its predecessors was established in 1900 by Andrew Carnegie as the Carnegie Technical Schools; it became the Carnegie Institute of Technology ...

and

Bell Labs Nokia Bell Labs, originally named Bell Telephone Laboratories (1925–1984), then AT&T Bell Laboratories (1984–1996) and Bell Labs Innovations (1996–2007), is an American industrial research and scientific development company owned by mult ...

in the 1970s. CERN started using multi-touch screens as early as 1976 for the controls of the Super Proton Synchrotron. Capacitive multi-touch displays were popularized by

Apple An apple is an edible fruit produced by an apple tree (''Malus domestica''). Apple trees are cultivated worldwide and are the most widely grown species in the genus '' Malus''. The tree originated in Central Asia, where its wild ances ...

's iPhone in 2007. Plural-point awareness may be used to implement additional functionality, such as pinch to zoom or to activate certain

subroutine In computer programming, a function or subroutine is a sequence of program instructions that performs a specific task, packaged as a unit. This unit can then be used in programs wherever that particular task should be performed. Functions ma ...

s attached to predefined gestures. Several uses of the term multi-touch resulted from the quick developments in this field, and many companies using the term to market older technology which is called '' gesture-enhanced single-touch'' or several other terms by other companies and researchers. Several other similar or related terms attempt to differentiate between whether a device can exactly determine or only approximate the location of different points of contact to further differentiate between the various technological capabilities, but they are often used as synonyms in marketing. Multi-touch is commonly implemented using

capacitive sensing In electrical engineering, capacitive sensing (sometimes capacitance sensing) is a technology, based on capacitive coupling, that can detect and measure anything that is conductive or has a dielectric constant different from air. Many types of se ...

technology in

mobile devices A mobile device (or handheld computer) is a computer small enough to hold and operate in the hand. Mobile devices typically have a flat LCD or OLED screen, a touchscreen interface, and digital or physical buttons. They may also have a physical ...

and

smart devices A smart device is an electronic device, generally connected to other devices or networks via different wireless protocols (such as Bluetooth, Zigbee, near-field communication, Wi-Fi, LiFi, or 5G) that can operate to some extent interactively an ...

. A capacitive touchscreen typically consists of a capacitive touch sensor,

application-specific integrated circuit An application-specific integrated circuit (ASIC ) is an integrated circuit (IC) chip customized for a particular use, rather than intended for general-purpose use, such as a chip designed to run in a digital voice recorder or a high-effici ...

(ASIC) controller and digital signal processor (DSP) fabricated from CMOS (complementary metal-oxide-semiconductor) technology. A more recent alternative approach is optical touch technology, based on

image sensor An image sensor or imager is a sensor that detects and conveys information used to make an image. It does so by converting the variable attenuation of light waves (as they pass through or reflect off objects) into signals, small bursts of c ...

technology.

Definition

, multi-touch is technology which enables a

to recognize more than one or more than two points of contact with the surface.

popularized the term "multi-touch" in 2007 with which it implemented additional functionality, such as

pinch to zoom In computing, multi-touch is technology that enables a surface (a touchpad or touchscreen) to recognize the presence of more than one point of contact with the surface at the same time. The origins of multitouch began at CERN, MIT, University ...

or to activate certain

s attached to predefined gestures. The two different uses of the term resulted from the quick developments in this field, and many companies using the term to market older technology which is called '' gesture-enhanced single-touch'' or several other terms by other companies and researchers. Several other similar or related terms attempt to differentiate between whether a device can exactly determine or only approximate the location of different points of contact to further differentiate between the various technological capabilities, but they are often used as synonyms in marketing.

History

1960–2000

The use of

technology predates both multi-touch technology and the personal computer. Early synthesizer and electronic instrument builders like

Hugh Le Caine Hugh Le Caine (May 27, 1914 – July 3, 1977) was a Canadian physicist, composer, and instrument builder. Le Caine was brought up in Port Arthur (now Thunder Bay) in northwestern Ontario. At a young age, he began making musical instruments. In y ...

and

Robert Moog Robert Arthur Moog ( ; May 23, 1934 – August 21, 2005) was an American engineer and electronic music pioneer. He was the founder of the synthesizer manufacturer Moog Music and the inventor of the first commercial synthesizer, the Moog synthes ...

experimented with using touch-sensitive capacitance sensors to control the sounds made by their instruments.Buxton, Bill
"Multitouch Overview"
/ref> IBM began building the first touch screens in the late 1960s. In 1972,

Control Data Control Data Corporation (CDC) was a mainframe and supercomputer firm. CDC was one of the nine major United States computer companies through most of the 1960s; the others were IBM, Burroughs Corporation, DEC, NCR, General Electric, Honeywell ...

released the

PLATO Plato ( ; grc-gre, Πλάτων ; 428/427 or 424/423 – 348/347 BC) was a Greek philosopher born in Athens during the Classical period in Ancient Greece. He founded the Platonist school of thought and the Academy, the first institutio ...

IV computer, an infrared terminal used for educational purposes, which employed single-touch points in a 16×16 array user interface. These early touchscreens only registered one point of touch at a time. On-screen keyboards (a well-known feature today) were thus awkward to use, because key-rollover and holding down a shift key while typing another were not possible. Exceptions to these were a "cross-wire" multi-touch reconfigurable touchscreen keyboard/display developed at the

Massachusetts Institute of Technology The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is a Private university, private Land-grant university, land-grant research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Established in 1861, MIT has played a key role in the development of modern t ...

in the early 1970s and the 16 button capacitive multi-touch screen developed at CERN in 1972 for the controls of the Super Proton Synchrotron that were under construction. CERN-Stumpe Capacitance Touchscreen

During the year 1976, a new x-y capacitive screen, based on the capacitance touch screens developed in 1972 by Danish electronics engineer

Bent Stumpe Bent Stumpe (born 12 September 1938, Copenhagen, Denmark) is a Danish electronic engineer who spent most of his career at the international research laboratory CERN, Geneva, Switzerland. Stumpe built in 1972, following an idea launched by Fran ...

, was developed at CERN. This technology, allowing an exact location of the different touch points, was used to develop a new type of

human machine interface In the industrial design field of human–computer interaction, a user interface (UI) is the space where interactions between humans and machines occur. The goal of this interaction is to allow effective operation and control of the machine fr ...

(HMI) for the control room of the Super Proton Synchrotron particle accelerator. In a handwritten note dated 11 March 1972, Stumpe presented his proposed solution – a capacitive touch screen with a fixed number of programmable buttons presented on a display. The screen was to consist of a set of capacitors etched into a film of copper on a sheet of glass, each capacitor being constructed so that a nearby flat conductor, such as the surface of a finger, would increase the capacitance by a significant amount. The capacitors were to consist of fine lines etched in copper on a sheet of glass – fine enough (80 μm) and sufficiently far apart (80 μm) to be invisible. In the final device, a simple lacquer coating prevented the fingers from actually touching the capacitors. In the same year, MIT described a keyboard with variable graphics capable of multi-touch detection. In the early 1980s, The

's Input Research Group were among the earliest to explore the software side of multi-touch input systems. A 1982 system at the University of Toronto used a frosted-glass panel with a camera placed behind the glass. When a finger or several fingers pressed on the glass, the camera would detect the action as one or more black spots on an otherwise white background, allowing it to be registered as an input. Since the size of a dot was dependent on pressure (how hard the person was pressing on the glass), the system was somewhat pressure-sensitive as well. Of note, this system was input only and not able to display graphics. In 1983,

at Murray Hill published a comprehensive discussion of touch-screen based interfaces, though it makes no mention of multiple fingers. In the same year, the video-based Video Place/Video Desk system of

Myron Krueger Myron Krueger (born 1942 in Gary, Indiana) is an American computer artist who developed early interactive works. He is also considered to be one of the first generation virtual reality and augmented reality researchers. While earning a Ph.D. ...

was influential in development of multi-touch gestures such as pinch-to-zoom, though this system had no touch interaction itself. By 1984, both Bell Labs and

had working multi-touch-screen prototypes – both input and graphics – that could respond interactively in response to multiple finger inputs. The Bell Labs system was based on capacitive coupling of fingers, whereas the CMU system was optical. In 1985, the canonical multitouch pinch-to-zoom gesture was demonstrated, with coordinated graphics, on CMU's system. In October 1985,

Steve Jobs Steven Paul Jobs (February 24, 1955 – October 5, 2011) was an American entrepreneur, industrial designer, media proprietor, and investor. He was the co-founder, chairman, and CEO of Apple; the chairman and majority shareholder of Pixar; ...

signed a non-disclosure agreement to tour CMU's Sensor Frame multi-touch lab. In 1990, Sears et al. published a review of academic research on single and multi-touch touchscreen

human–computer interaction Human–computer interaction (HCI) is research in the design and the use of computer technology, which focuses on the interfaces between people ( users) and computers. HCI researchers observe the ways humans interact with computers and design ...

of the time, describing single touch gestures such as rotating knobs, swiping the screen to activate a switch (or a U-shaped gesture for a toggle switch), and touchscreen keyboards (including a study that showed that users could type at 25 words per minute for a touchscreen keyboard compared with 58 words per minute for a standard keyboard, with multi-touch hypothesized to improve data entry rate); multi-touch gestures such as selecting a range of a line, connecting objects, and a "tap-click" gesture to select while maintaining location with another finger are also described. In 1991,

Pierre Wellner Pierre is a masculine given name. It is a French form of the name Peter. Pierre originally meant "rock" or "stone" in French (derived from the Greek word πέτρος (''petros'') meaning "stone, rock", via Latin "petra"). It is a translation ...

advanced the topic publishing about his multi-touch "Digital Desk", which supported multi-finger and pinching motions. Various companies expanded upon these inventions in the beginning of the twenty-first century.

2000 – present day

Between 1999 and 2005, the company Fingerworks developed various multi-touch technologies, including Touchstream keyboards and the iGesture Pad. in the early 2000s Alan Hedge, professor of human factors and ergonomics at

Cornell University Cornell University is a private statutory land-grant research university based in Ithaca, New York. It is a member of the Ivy League. Founded in 1865 by Ezra Cornell and Andrew Dickson White, Cornell was founded with the intention to ...

published several studies about this technology. In 2005, Apple acquired Fingerworks and its multi-touch technology. In 2004, french start-up JazzMutant developed the Lemur Input Device, a music controller that became in 2005 the first commercial product to feature a proprietary transparent multi-touch screen, allowing direct, ten-finger manipulation on the display. In January 2007, multi-touch technology became mainstream with the iPhone, and in its iPhone announcement Apple even stated it "invented multi touch", however both the function and the term predate the announcement or patent requests, except for the area of capacitive mobile screens, which did not exist before Fingerworks/Apple's technology (Fingerworks filed patents in 2001–2005, subsequent multi-touch refinements were patented by Apple). However, the U.S. Patent and Trademark office declared that the "pinch-to-zoom" functionality was predicted by U.S. Patent # 7,844,915 relating to gestures on touch screens, filed by Bran Ferren and Daniel Hillis in 2005, as was inertial scrolling, thus invalidated a key claims of Apple's patent. In 2001, Microsoft's table-top touch platform,

Microsoft PixelSense Microsoft PixelSense (formerly called Microsoft Surface) was an interactive surface computing platform that allowed one or more people to use and touch real-world objects, and share digital content at the same time. The PixelSense platform consist ...

(formerly Surface) started development, which interacts with both the user's touch and their electronic devices and became commercial on May 29, 2007. Similarly, in 2001, Mitsubishi Electric Research Laboratories (MERL) began development of a multi-touch, multi-user system called

DiamondTouch The DiamondTouch table is a multi-touch, interactive PC interface product from Circle Twelve Inc. It is a human interface device that has the capability of allowing multiple people to interact simultaneously while identifying which person is to ...

. In 2008, the Diamondtouch became a commercial product and is also based on capacitance, but able to differentiate between multiple simultaneous users or rather, the chairs in which each user is seated or the floorpad on which the user is standing. In 2007, NORTD labs

Open Source Open source is source code that is made freely available for possible modification and redistribution. Products include permission to use the source code, design documents, or content of the product. The open-source model is a decentralized sof ...

system offered its CUBIT (multi-touch). Small-scale touch devices rapidly became commonplace in 2008. The number of touch screen telephones was expected to increase from 200,000 shipped in 2006 to 21 million in 2012. In May 2015, Apple was granted a patent for a "fusion keyboard", which turns individual physical keys into multi-touch buttons.

Brands and manufacturers

has retailed and distributed numerous products using multi-touch technology, most prominently including its iPhone smartphone and

iPad The iPad is a brand of iOS and iPadOS-based tablet computers that are developed by Apple Inc. The iPad was conceived before the related iPhone but the iPhone was developed and released first. Speculation about the development, operati ...

tablet. Additionally, Apple also holds several

patent A patent is a type of intellectual property that gives its owner the legal right to exclude others from making, using, or selling an invention for a limited period of time in exchange for publishing an sufficiency of disclosure, enabling disclo ...

s related to the implementation of multi-touch in user interfaces, however the legitimacy of some patents has been disputed. Apple additionally attempted to register "Multi-touch" as a

trademark A trademark (also written trade mark or trade-mark) is a type of intellectual property consisting of a recognizable sign, design, or expression that identifies products or services from a particular source and distinguishes them from oth ...

in the United Stateshowever its request was denied by the

United States Patent and Trademark Office The United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) is an agency in the U.S. Department of Commerce that serves as the national patent office and trademark registration authority for the United States. The USPTO's headquarters are in Alex ...

because it considered the term generic. Multi-touch sensing and processing occurs via an

ASIC An application-specific integrated circuit (ASIC ) is an integrated circuit (IC) chip customized for a particular use, rather than intended for general-purpose use, such as a chip designed to run in a digital voice recorder or a high-effici ...

sensor that is attached to the touch surface. Usually, separate companies make the ASIC and screen that combine into a touch screen; conversely, a touchpad's surface and ASIC are usually manufactured by the same company. There have been large companies in recent years that have expanded into the growing multi-touch industry, with systems designed for everything from the casual user to multinational organizations. It is now common for laptop manufacturers to include multi-touch

s on their laptops, and

tablet computer A tablet computer, commonly shortened to tablet, is a mobile device, typically with a mobile operating system and touchscreen display processing circuitry, and a rechargeable battery in a single, thin and flat package. Tablets, being comput ...

s respond to touch input rather than traditional stylus input and it is supported by many recent

operating system An operating system (OS) is system software that manages computer hardware, software resources, and provides common daemon (computing), services for computer programs. Time-sharing operating systems scheduler (computing), schedule tasks for ef ...

s. A few companies are focusing on large-scale surface computing rather than personal electronics, either large multi-touch tables or wall surfaces. These systems are generally used by government organizations, museums, and companies as a means of information or exhibit display. Large scale multi-touch surfaces are manufactured by Finnish compan
MultiTaction
on their 55" MT Cells (55" screens) who also have office locations in London, California and Singapore. MultiTaction also buil
unique collaboration software
especially designed for multi-touch screens such a
MT Canvus
an
MT Showcase

Implementations

Multi-touch has been implemented in several different ways, depending on the size and type of interface. The most popular form are mobile devices, tablets, touchtables and walls. Both touchtables and touch walls project an image through acrylic or glass, and then back-light the image with LEDs. Touch surfaces can also be made pressure-sensitive by the addition of a pressure-sensitive coating that flexes differently depending on how firmly it is pressed, altering the reflection. Handheld technologies use a panel that carries an electrical charge. When a finger touches the screen, the touch disrupts the panel's electrical field. The disruption is registered as a computer event (gesture) and may be sent to the software, which may then initiate a response to the gesture event. In the past few years, several companies have released products that use multi-touch. In an attempt to make the expensive technology more accessible, hobbyists have also published methods of constructing DIY touchscreens.

Capacitive

Capacitive technologies include:Knowledge base:Multitouch technologies. Digest author: Gennadi Blindmann
/ref> * Surface Capacitive Technology or Near Field Imaging (NFI) * Projected Capacitive Touch (PCT) ** Mutual capacitance ** Self-capacitance *In-cell Capacitive

Resistive

Resistive technologies include: * Analog Resistive *Digital Resistive or In-Cell Resistive

Optical

Optical touch technology is based on

technology. It functions when a finger or an object touches the surface, causing the light to scatter, the reflection of which is caught with sensors or cameras that send the data to software that dictates response to the touch, depending on the type of reflection measured. Optical technologies include: * Optical Imaging or Infrared technology *Rear Diffused Illumination (DI) *Infrared Grid Technology (opto-matrix) or Digital Waveguide Touch (DWT) or Infrared Optical Waveguide *

Frustrated Total Internal Reflection Total internal reflection (TIR) is the optical phenomenon in which waves arriving at the interface (boundary) from one medium to another (e.g., from water to air) are not refracted into the second ("external") medium, but completely reflected ...

(FTIR) *Diffused Surface Illumination (DSI) *Laser Light Plane (LLP) *In-Cell Optical

Wave

Acoustic and radio-frequency wave-based technologies include: * Surface Acoustic Wave (SAW) *Bending Wave Touch (BWT) ** Dispersive Signal Touch (DST) ** Acoustic Pulse Recognition (APR) * Force-Sensing Touch Technology

Multi-touch gestures

Multi-touch touchscreen gestures enable predefined motions to interact with the device and software. An increasing number of devices like

smartphone A smartphone is a portable computer device that combines mobile telephone and computing functions into one unit. They are distinguished from feature phones by their stronger hardware capabilities and extensive mobile operating systems, whic ...

s, laptops or

desktop computer A desktop computer (often abbreviated desktop) is a personal computer designed for regular use at a single location on or near a desk due to its size and power requirements. The most common configuration has a case that houses the power supply ...

s have functions that are triggered by multi-touch gestures.

Popular culture

Before 2007

Years before it was a viable consumer product, popular culture portrayed potential uses of multi-touch technology in the future, including in several installments of the ''

Star Trek ''Star Trek'' is an American science fiction media franchise created by Gene Roddenberry, which began with the eponymous 1960s television series and quickly became a worldwide pop-culture phenomenon. The franchise has expanded into vario ...

'' franchise. In the 1982 Disney

sci-fi Science fiction (sometimes shortened to Sci-Fi or SF) is a genre of speculative fiction which typically deals with imaginative and futuristic concepts such as advanced science and technology, space exploration, time travel, parallel univ ...

film ''

Tron ''Tron'' (stylized as ''TRON'') is a 1982 American science fiction action-adventure film written and directed by Steven Lisberger from a story by Lisberger and Bonnie MacBird. The film stars Jeff Bridges as Kevin Flynn, a computer programme ...

'' a device similar to the Microsoft Surface was shown. It took up an executive's entire desk and was used to communicate with the Master Control computer. In the 2002 film '' Minority Report'', Tom Cruise uses a set of gloves that resemble a multi-touch interface to browse through information. In the 2005 film ''

The Island The Island(s) may refer to: Places * Any of various islands around the world, see the list of islands * The Island (Cache County, Utah), an island on the Bear River, Utah * The Island, Chennai, a river island in India * The Island, Chicago, a n ...

'', another form of a multi-touch computer was seen where the professor, played by

Sean Bean Sean Bean (born Shaun Mark Bean on 17 April 1959) is an English actor. After graduating from the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, Bean made his professional debut in a theatre production of '' Romeo and Juliet'' in 1983. Retaining his Yorkshire ...

, has a multi-touch desktop to organize files, based on an early version of

Microsoft Surface Microsoft Surface is a series of touchscreen-based personal computers, tablets and interactive whiteboards designed and developed by Microsoft, running the Microsoft Windows operating system, apart from the Surface Duo, which runs on Andro ...

(not be confused with the

tablet computers A tablet computer, commonly shortened to tablet, is a mobile device, typically with a mobile operating system and touchscreen display processing circuitry, and a rechargeable battery in a single, thin and flat package. Tablets, being comput ...

which now bear that name). In 2007, the television series '' CSI: Miami'' introduced both surface and wall multi-touch displays in its sixth season.

After 2007

Multi-touch technology can be seen in the 2008

James Bond The ''James Bond'' series focuses on a fictional Secret Intelligence Service, British Secret Service agent created in 1953 by writer Ian Fleming, who featured him in twelve novels and two short-story collections. Since Fleming's death in 19 ...

film ''

Quantum of Solace ''Quantum of Solace'' is a 2008 spy film and the twenty-second in the ''James Bond'' series produced by Eon Productions. It is the sequel to ''Casino Royale'' (2006). Directed by Marc Forster and written by Neil Purvis, Robert Wade, and ...

'', where MI6 uses a touch interface to browse information about the criminal Dominic Greene. In the 2008 film '' The Day the Earth Stood Still'', Microsoft's Surface was used . The television series '' NCIS: Los Angeles'', which premiered 2009, makes use of multi-touch surfaces and wall panels as an initiative to go digital. In a 2008, an episode of the television series ''

The Simpsons ''The Simpsons'' is an American animated sitcom created by Matt Groening for the Fox Broadcasting Company. The series is a satirical depiction of American life, epitomized by the Simpson family, which consists of Homer Simpson, Homer, Marge ...

'',

Lisa Simpson Lisa Marie Simpson is a fictional character in the animated television series '' The Simpsons''. She is the middle child and most accomplished of the Simpson family. Voiced by Yeardley Smith, Lisa was born as a character in '' The Tracey Ullma ...

travels to the underwater headquarters of Mapple to visit Steve Mobbs, who is shown to be performing multiple multi-touch hand gestures on a large touch wall. In the 2009, the film ''

District 9 ''District 9'' is a 2009 science fiction mockumentary film directed by Neill Blomkamp in his feature film debut, written by Blomkamp and Terri Tatchell, and produced by Peter Jackson and Carolynne Cunningham. It is a co-production of New Ze ...

'' the interface used to control the alien ship features similar technology.

10/GUI

10/GUI is a proposed new

user interface In the industrial design field of human–computer interaction, a user interface (UI) is the space where interactions between humans and machines occur. The goal of this interaction is to allow effective operation and control of the machine f ...

paradigm. Created in 2009 by R. Clayton Miller, it combines multi-touch input with a new windowing manager. It splits the touch surface away from the screen, so that user fatigue is reduced and the users' hands don't obstruct the display. Instead of placing windows all over the screen, the windowing manager, Con10uum, uses a linear paradigm, with multi-touch used to navigate between and arrange the windows. An area at the right side of the touch screen brings up a global context menu, and a similar strip at the left side brings up application-specific menus. An open source community preview of the Con10uum window manager was made available in November, 2009.

References

External links

Multi-Touch Systems that I Have Known and Loved
– An overview by researcher Bill Buxton of Microsoft Research, formerly at University of Toronto and Xerox PARC.

contains a history of pen computing, including touch and gesture technology, from approximately 1917 to 1992.

* * ttp://cs.nyu.edu/~jhan/ftirtouch/ Multi-Touch Interaction Research @ NYUbr>Camera-based multi-touch for wall-sized displaysDavid Wessel MultitouchJeff Han's Multi Touch Screen's chronology archive
De
Force-Sensing, Multi-Touch, User Interaction TechnologyLCD In-Cell Touch by Geoff Walker and Mark FihnTouch technologies for large-format applications by Geoff Walker
* * *{{YouTube, JVRuDY4X88M, Video: Introduction to mTouch Capacitive Touch Sensing Touchscreens Articles containing video clips CERN