Paper Written By: Paul H. Dietz, Benjamin Eidelson, Jonathan Westhues, and Steven Bathiche (The Applied Sciences Group - Microsoft Corporation)
Comments: Patrick Webster, Monty Garner
This paper described how a normal keyboard worked and then compared the pressure sensitive keyboard they created to it. The picture below shows the structure that is located beneath the keys of an everyday keyboard.
Keyboards have not changed much over the years since computers were invented, but the underneath portion has. IBM used to have a keyboard that had a spring mechanism, but due to the loud noise it made manufacturers tried to go with a more quiet approach. This paper talks about how their pressure sensitive keyboard looks and feels just like a regular keyboard with the quiet mechanism, but it can also report the pressure on each key independently. It could be manufactured just as easily as normal keyboards, but would only cost a slight bit more. Below is a picture of the mechanics behind the pressure sensitive keyboard.
This picture allows you to see that it is just an extension off of the original keyboard design that was shown before this. It is designed to decrease the resistance from the top layer to the bottom layer while using the space provided by the dome structure beneath the key. The Applied Sciences Group from Microsoft believed that it was more important for the keyboard to be a great keyboard more than it was to be a pressure sensitive one. It consists of many resistors that connect into a row/column pairing. The pressure is measured by using the same voltage in all of the rows and columns except for one where the reading will begin. It goes through this process until every pair has been read. This design also accomplished the keyboard problem called "ghosting". "Ghosting" is when there are three keys being pressed (two on the same row and two on the same column). This keyboard has almost eliminated this problem. There were three applications of this keyboard that they mentioned. These consisted of gaming, emotional instant messaging, and general typing. For gaming it would help enhance the way a person plays a computer game. It could "control the intensity or degree of some keyboard function by the force level used to depress that key" (57). For the emotional instant messaging it would increase the font with the intensity of the key stroke and even change the font depending on how you type. For general typing this would help allow cleaner typing. When a person is typing rapidly it is often easy for them to hit an extra key by accident or press down too long to where a character is repeating. The pressure sensitivity would be able to realize which key is actually being pressed and which key was hit by accident. It also implemented things for the backspace key. If the user presses lightly it will delete each character one by one, or if it is pressed with slightly greater force then it will delete an entire word. This keyboard can be easy to learn by adjusting software in order for a user to learn at their own pace, and could easily be manufactured for a premium more than other keyboards.
Discussion:
I think this paper was very interesting and this keyboard could change the way we type documents or chat online. It could even make gaming more popular because you would have even more control over what happens in the game. I don't really see any faults with this work. It was able to overcome a normal keyboard problem that no other keyboards have seem to accomplish. It has many applications of how this keyboard could be better than the average keyboard. I think that future work could be using this with Word. Letting a group of people test out the keyboard and a Microsoft Word "like" program and have them type out a paper. Some testers could do free writing while others could write a paper for a class or something similar. I know I would love to try this when using an instant messenger so that people would understand if I was angry, happy and/or excited.
I thought the pressure sensitive keyboard design was interesting as well. I think this design has the most commercial appeal of all the papers I have read so far. I think what draws me to the idea most is how it could affect gaming. I liked the concept of scaling run speed by how hard you pressed on the key. I'm sure that there are many other possibilities that could be done with a keyboard like this and it is something I would like to see on the market.
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