Researchers have developed a way to turn your walls into touchpads

Google, Amazon, and Apple all agree that smart home speakers are the device the market would want. That’s why the company are selling the Echo, Home, and Homepod respectively. Yet, one could argue that smart home speakers still leave a device between you and the ambient computing future everyone wants.

That may change soon if researchers at the Carnegie Mellon University and Disney Research are successful in their endeavors. According to research, they have developed a way that can make your walls smart, at only $20 per meter. And they call it the Wall++.

It seems the researchers use a custom sensor board and conductive paint to create electrodes.

Image credit: CMU and Disney Research via YouTube

It seems the researchers use a custom sensor board and conductive paint to create electrodes, which can turn a standard wall into a gesture-sensing touchpad. They also use an “electromagnetic sensor to detect and track electrical devices and appliances.” Like other smart home devices, the wall can be used to monitor activity in your rooms, control the lights and more. The wall can also track if certain electronic devices are being used in the room, by detecting their electromagnetic signatures.

Well, there’s work to be done still, but are you thinking smart walls like in Iron Man yet?

Check the video below:

The research paper on this sensing approach, called Wall++, at CHI 2018, was presented at the Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, in Montreal, Canada.