UIST2009: A Practical Pressure Sensitive Keyboard

Summary
     This paper discussed a possible method for creating a pressure sensitive keyboard.  This is not talking about a touchscreen keyboard as I first thought.  This means when the key is pressed there is a pressure sensor underneath it to detect how hard the key was pressed.  These type of keyboards already exist but they use springs rather than a true pressure sensor.  The problem with the spring pressure sensors is that they can be rather noisy and they consume more power.  The author also mentions that their keyboard could be mass produced.

A traditional keyboard on the left, a pressure sensing on the right, the main difference is the bottom contacts which are used for detecting pressure on the left

Discussion
      This paper is significant because it discusses a way to build a pressure sensing keyboard that can be mass produced.  There are several advantages for this new keyboard.  For one it requires less power than other types of keyboards.  Older keyboards can't handle when more than two keys are pressed on a row at once.  The design of this keyboard allows this to occur.  Some uses for a pressure sensing keyboard include gaming where different amounts of pressure to the key could perform different actions.  The author also discusses "emotional instant messaging" where depending on how hard you hit the keys the letters show up larger or smaller.
     One fault of this article that I found was they really haven't tested the demand for a keyboard like this.  They claim it could be used for several different applications but the only one I found convincing was the gaming.  Unless someone comes up with a better way of designing a pressure sensing keyboard I believe it will be put to mass production in the future.