?Researchers used a couple of hundred dollars worth of materials to turn a wall into a giant touch screen.研究人員用幾百美元的材料將墻壁變成巨型觸摸屏。
? 撰文\播音:史蒂夫·米爾斯基(Steve Mirsky) 翻譯:陳美娟
? Hi, I’m?Scientific American?podcast editor Steve Mirsky. And here’s a short piece from the July 2018 issue of the magazine, in the section called Advances: Dispatches from the Frontiers of Science, Technology and Medicine. 嘿大家好,我是《科學美國人》博客史蒂夫·米爾斯基。接下來是摘自2018年7月號《學界進展:科學,技術(shù)與醫(yī)藥前瞻文章》上的小文章。
? Smart Walls by Prachi Patel. 《智能墻》,普拉奇·帕特爾(Prachi Patel)作。
? The right paint can add pizazz to your walls—and now it can also make them smarter. Researchers recently converted a wall into an outsize trackpad and motion sensor by using low-cost conductive paint to create a large grid of electrodes. 合適的涂料可以在墻壁涂出披薩形狀,而現(xiàn)在,涂料也可以使墻壁變得智能。最近,研究人員利用低成本的導電涂料在墻上創(chuàng)建了一個巨大的電極網(wǎng)格,將一堵墻改造成一個大型的軌跡板和運動傳感器。 Such a smart wall can sense human touch and track gestures from a short distance. It can also detect the locations of appliances and whether they are switched on. The technology could someday turn on lights when a person enters a room, track a player's motion in an interactive video game or monitor a child's television use. Yang Zhang, a computer science doctoral student at Carnegie Mellon University, who helped to develop the concept. 這樣一個智能墻可以近距離感應到人的觸摸和手勢。它還可以檢測電器的位置以及接通情況。將來有一天,這種技術(shù)可以具有在人進入房間時就打開燈、在交互式電子游戲中跟蹤玩家的動作,或者監(jiān)控孩子看電視情況等功能。張楊是卡內(nèi)基梅隆大學計算機科學專業(yè)的博士生,他有參與這種技術(shù)的開發(fā)。 To create the high-tech surface, Zhang and his colleagues applied painter's tape in a lattice pattern to a 12-by-eight-foot wall, then coated it with commercially available conductive nickel paint. Removing the tape left a pattern of diamond-shaped electrodes, which the researchers connected using a grid of thin copper tape strips. They affixed a vinyl sticker in the middle of each diamond to insulate the electrodes from one another. Finally, they wired the strips to a custom-built circuit board and covered the wall with standard latex paint. The entire project took four hours and cost less than $200. 為了構(gòu)造這種高科技的墻面,張楊和他的同事們把作畫用的膠帶一格格貼在12×8英尺的墻上,然后用市面上可買到的導電鎳顏料覆蓋住。移除膠帶后留下一個個菱形的電極圖案,研究人員用薄銅帶連接起來每格圖案。他們在每個菱形圖案中間貼上一層乙烯基貼紙,使電極彼此絕緣。最后,他們把各束銅帶連接到一個定制的電路板上,再用標準的乳膠漆覆蓋墻。整個項目耗時四小時,成本不到200美元。 Zhang and his colleagues at Disney Research presented the wall at the CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems in Montreal. 在蒙特利爾召開的以“計算機系統(tǒng)中人為因素干擾”為主題的?CHI大會上,張楊和他來自迪斯尼研究部的同事們展示了這面墻的功能。
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? In tracking a touch or gesture, the wall functions similarly to a smartphone screen. The circuit board prompts the electrodes to emit an electric field; when a person's body intercepts this field, it triggers a measurable change in current at the nearby electrodes. 在對觸摸或手勢進行追蹤的時候,這面墻的功能與智能手機屏幕相似。墻中的電路板促使電極發(fā)出電場;當人體阻擋該電場時,它會觸發(fā)附近電極上電流產(chǎn)生可測量變化。 In the wall's appliance-detection mode, the power is turned off, and the electrodes act as an antenna to passively pick up electromagnetic waves emitted by nearby devices. The researchers detected iPads up to 6.5 feet away from of the wall; fans and floor lamps could be sensed from about 10 feet. 在墻壁的設備檢測模式下,電源關(guān)閉,電極作為天線被動地接收附近設備發(fā)射的電磁波。研究人員把iPad放到離墻6.5英尺遠,這面墻可以感應到10英尺內(nèi)的風扇和落地燈。
? That was?Smart Walls by Prachi Patel. 這是普拉奇·帕特爾的《智能墻》。