Think the rear sensor on the Vita was cool? Disney Research’s Touche turns your doorknob into a touch device.

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I love how games adopt to new interfaces. Drops in prices in accelerometer technology normally found in airbag sensors enabled the Wii and the infra-red and motion-sensing tech in the Kinect allows games like Star Wars Kinect. (Maybe that’s not a good thing).

Today, a group at Disney Research will unveil the results from their Touché system which turns everyday objects in touch devices.  Check the doorknob example above. As the New Scientist explains:

It works thanks to capacitive sensing, in which an electrical signal passing through the object changes when touched by a conductive material, such as a human finger. Capacitive sensing is already found in smartphone touchscreens, but these devices use electrical signals at only a single frequency, whereas Touché works with a range of frequencies.

Having played both Fingle and Bloop over the weekend, I can see lots of cool implementations of this for games in the future.

[Via New Scientist]