TACTUS: A hardware and software testbed for research in multi-touch interaction

Abstract

This paper presents the TACTUS Multi-Touch Research Testbed, a hardware and software system for enabling research in multi-touch interaction. A detailed discussion is provided on hardware construction, pitfalls, design options, and software architecture to bridge the gaps in the existing literature and inform the researcher on the practical requirements of a multi-touch research testbed. This includes a comprehensive description of the vision-based image processing pipeline, developed for the TACTUS software library, which makes surface interactions available to multi-touch applications. Furthermore, the paper explores the higher-level functionality and utility of the TACTUS software library and how researchers can leverage the system to investigate multi-touch interaction techniques. © 2009 Springer Berlin Heidelberg.