Paper Reading # 16

Comments
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Reference
A Practical Pressure Sensitive Computer Keyboard
Paul H. Dietz, Benjamin Eidelson, Jonathan Westhues and Steven Batiche
UIST 09 October 4-7, 2009 Victoria, British Columbia, Canada

Summary

This paper talks about a pressure sensitive computer keyboard. The idea is to design a pressure keyboard that can be a little more expensive to mass produce but not to the extent where it would be impossible to sell. In the introduction they explain that even though computers have changed dramatically since their start, keyboards have not changed much. Prior work with pressure keyboards have been used for electronic music, improving text generation for disabled people, and for biometric user authentication. All of the uses mentioned before are not suitable for mass production due to its cost. The design proposed in this paper uses piezoresistive material instead of the current flexible membrane technology, and carbon screen printed ink. This design allows for power saving as it only uses power when a key has been pressed. The way this keyboard works is that it is a matrix of resistors connecting to a unique row-column pair. The authors claim this design overcomes the problem of "ghosting". Some of the applications that are possible with this type of keyboard are gaming, instant messaging, and general typing.

Discussion
Personally I had never wondered a keyboard works and well this paper definitely explains how modern keyboards work. What was interesting about reading this paper is questioning why we have not developed new keyboard technology? I believe there are many applications that can benefit from pressure sensing keyboards. The idea explained in this paper for general typing could be very beneficial. A slight tap on the backspace key and you can delete a letter, while a hard tap can delete a whole word.