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I am wondering if it is possible to detect from which direction (or at which angle) a human touches a touchscreen.

Imagine something like this: A touches the screen from an angle of 135 degrees, later B touches the screen from an angle of 45 degrees

Is there any technology out there (e.g. special capacitors) that can determine the angle resulting from touch B (approx. 45 degrees) and that resulting from touch A (approx. 135 degrees)?

I think I am missing the correct keywords to research this.

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    \$\begingroup\$ I am not sure how you would define a touching angle, my the direction of the finger? what if the finger is bent? What if it is a stylus? \$\endgroup\$
    – PlasmaHH
    Commented Jul 21, 2015 at 9:23
  • \$\begingroup\$ I think that would extend to the hand and arm.. so imagine a huge screen where multiple people touch the same point from different directions, each arm/finger would approach from a different direction. I would guess the pressure on some places would be higher than other places. But you are right, probably it is challenging because people's fingers look very different and people can point in different ways. \$\endgroup\$
    – Mohamed Khamis
    Commented Jul 21, 2015 at 9:34
  • \$\begingroup\$ already hands, and then arms are complex things with lots of ways to bend and hold them, I cant even imagine a rule to properly assign a direction by looking at a situation, let alone envision a mechanism that could do so. I think we have an XY problem here: you think detecting the direction will solve a problem for you, but instead you probably should ask for a solution to that original problem so people can come up with useful alternatives to bent fingers. Btw. I often use my touchscreen with my nose. \$\endgroup\$
    – PlasmaHH
    Commented Jul 21, 2015 at 9:54
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    \$\begingroup\$ What comes to mind is to detect proximity raster as well as touch. Then do some gradient descent on the bitmap... \$\endgroup\$
    – Dzarda
    Commented Jul 21, 2015 at 11:35
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    \$\begingroup\$ Idea 2) Detect lateral forces acting on the touchsceen. \$\endgroup\$
    – Dzarda
    Commented Jul 21, 2015 at 11:36

2 Answers 2

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Four days ago, I received a news email from a technology site I follow. One of the news was that Microsoft registered a patent to do what you're asking.

Here is the link for the patent.

The news site is "Clube do Hardware" and the news about this theme was in "Boletim 1440". You can see the (old) news bulletin in this page. Although this specific edition is not yet on the page, it may appear there soon. (Sorry, due to the copyright terms, I can't post the news here)

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As far as I know, there is nothing along the lines of what you want.

On the other hand, if you use a screen/stylus combination such as the WACOM tablets, these can sense stylus angle. See http://www.automotiveillustrations.com/tutorials/wacom-drawing-tablet-tutorial.html

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