A Practical Pressure Sensitive Computer Keyboard

By Paul H. Dietz, Benjamin Eidelson, Jonathan Westhues and Steven Bathiche

Summary:

The focus of this paper was on the implementation of pressure sensitivity to computer keyboards. The design presented in the paper was a relatively simple adjustment to the already common design of computer keyboards. This simple and low cost adjustment would allow for possible mass marketing of the device. One of the first topics discussed in this paper was that the design was a simple modification to the common keyboard design, with some alterations to the contact and space layers. The pressure sensitive design would require larger top and bottom contacts as well as a large space layer between them, so that when the user pressed down on the key the more pressure used would create more contact with the device and would register a stronger signal. Some of the possible applications mentioned in this paper were gaming and emotional instant messaging. A pressure sensitive keyboard could allow gamers the ability to scale movement actions such as running and jumping by how hard they pressed on the appropriate keys. In emotional instant messaging font size could easily be scaled by how hard the user pressed on the keys. A pressure sensitive keyboard such as this could have many affects on typing in general, such as allowing more functions to single keys like allowing backspace to either delete letters, words, or lines at a time depending on how hard the key is pressed.

Below is a picture showing the difference between a normal keyboard(left), and the new pressure sensitive design(right).

Discussion:

Unlike some of the other papers I read this one was most commercially probable. Even though the design is simplistic, I liked how practical it was and how easy it would be to modify the already common keyboard design with this new adjustment. This paper really presented something that could be easily integrated into my everyday life. A pressure sensitive keyboard could allow more intuitive typing and allow for more macros and functions based on key combinations. Of all the papers presented so far in class this is the one that I would most like to sample, because it is the only one I can see made commonly available in the near future.