MagSurface: Wireless 2D Finger Tracking Leveraging Magnetic Fields

Abstract: With the ubiquity of touchscreens, touch input modality has become a popular way of interaction. However, current touchscreen technology is limiting in its design as it restricts touch interactions to specially instrumented touch surfaces. Surface contaminants like water can also hinder proper interactions. In this paper, we propose the use of magnetic field sensing to enable finger tracking on a surface with minimal instrumentation. Our system, MagSurface, turns everyday surfaces into a touch medium, thus allowing more flexibility in the types of touch surfaces. The evaluation of our system consists of quantifying the accuracy of the system in locating an object on 2D flat surfaces. We test our system on three different surface materials to validate its usage scenarios. A qualitative user experience study was also conducted to get feedback on the ease of use and comfort of the system. Localization error as low as a few millimeters was achieved