Gel interfaces

The GelForce, engineered at the University of Tokyo, is a transparent deformable gel that measures the distribution of the magnitude and direction of force. The sensor is composed of a transparent elastic body, two layers of blue and red markers, and a CCD camera. Deformations of the surface -when pressed with finger, for instance- are then calculated in real time.

One of the goals of the project is to develop a finger-shaped sensor for robotic hands allowing robots to perform fine manipulation tasks just as humans do.
For robots? Why should they have all the fun?

Mind-blowing video.

Still in the "I want one" series: Japanese interaction designer Akemi Tazaki made SoftInterface, a soft, fluid switch that makes people really want to touch it.

Liisa Torikka and Joonas Juutilainen, at the Media Lab in Helsinki, created a fingeroperated, web-based messageboard. They covered a window with thick, semitransparent colored gel and superimposed a layer of transparent plastic, to make a surface where people could draw or write with their fingers.

On the other side of the glass, a webcam tracked the input and send the captured image in realtime to a website.
This gelBoard practically resets it self while one draws new items on the board.