Method for Recognizing Pressing Position and Shear Force Using Active Acoustic Sensing on Gel Plates

A touch interface is an important technology used in many devices, including touch panels in smartphones. Many touch panels only detect the contact position. If devices can detect shear force in addition to the contact position, various touch interactions are possible. We propose a two-step recognition method for recognizing the pressing position and shear force using active acoustic sensing, which transmits acoustic signals to an object and recognizes the state of the object by analyzing its response. Specifically, we attach a contact speaker transmitting an ultrasonic sweep signal and a contact microphone receiving ultrasonic waves to a plate of gel. The propagation characteristics of ultrasonic waves differ due to changes in the shape of the gel caused by the user’s actions on the gel. This system recognizes the pressing position and shear force on the basis of the difference in acoustic characteristics. An evaluation of our method involving a user-independent model confirmed that four pressing positions were recognized with an F1 score of 85.4%, and four shear-force directions were recognized with an F1 score of 69.4%.