Touchscreen technologies have evolved a lot past years, with the main advancement being multi touch inputs. There are a lot of companies out there developing technologies that could enable old devices to become touch compatible. Displax is one such technology, developed by a Portuguese company, that can transform almost any surface in a multitouch interface. It works on wood, plastic, glass (over or beneath it) and can also be applied to curved surfaces. Oh, and can also detect flows of air like the one coming from your breath.

    Displax layer is very thin at approximately 100 microns and contains nanowires that communicate with a micro-controller that detects user inputs and computes coordinates. Displax can be used on screens up to 120 inches in diagonal, and for the shown 50 inch prototype up to 16 simultaneous inputs can be detected at one time. Taking into consideration that the Displax layer has 98% transparency becomes clear it’s a technology superior to current touch layers used in devices.

    Displax allows multi touch on a grand scale

    Displax allows multi touch on a grand scale

    Another plus for Displax is that it is easy to install, connects its controller via USB and comes with a control panel for calibration and settings. What’s also incredible is that the final products should arrive on market as soon as July 2010, so expect a lot of devices multi touch enabled, especially big screen devices, like LCD TVs which now can be used also as input metods. Imagine playing with your friends on a 52 inch monster!

    Source: Crunchgear