Estimating physical properties of contact objects in multi-touch interaction: focusing on art-related applications

Abstract

Today's touch input method goes beyond the mouse and keyboard to make human-computer interaction more intuitive and diverse. Many artists attempt various creative activities such as playing virtual instruments or drawing pictures on virtual canvases through digital art applications, going beyond the existing analog media. However, the conventional touch input method does not consider that the artistic expression result is different depending on the material characteristics of the tool contacting the medium in the artistic creation activity. This research investigates the possibility of calculating kinetic information of the touch, and it proposes a new multi-touch technique capable of estimating the physical properties of an object or a user's body in contact with the touch surface. The technique of this study is a new touch input method that estimates the Young's modulus and the stiffness of the end effector based on changes in force and deformation during contact with a general-purpose touch-pad. This information can be useful for simulating artistic outcomes that vary with the material properties of tools used in painting, sculpture, and music. The estimated material properties enable new and more realistic artistic expressions in touch-based digital art applications such as tone changes in virtual instruments or different effects of different paintbrushes.