TACTUS: A Hardware and Software Testbed for Research in Multi-Touch Interaction

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.

• Type: Journal
• Year: 2009
• Where: HCI
• Authors: Paul Varcholik, Joseph J. LaViola Jr., Denise M. Nicholson
• Keywords: HCI 2009, Human Computer Interaction, Multi-touch, Multi-touch Interaction, Multi-touch Research