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Tangible Engine Now Available for Colossus 86” Touch Table

Our Object Recognition Software Now Supports Our Largest Touch Table
Jul
24
2019
Authored by
Jim Spadaccini
Founder & Creative Director

Ideum is happy to announce that Tangible Engine now supports our Colossus 86” multitouch table. Originally released in 2016, Tangible Engine was the first object recognition SDK (software development kit) for projected capacitive touch displays. Initially designed to work with Ideum’s 43”, 49”, 55”, and 65” touch tables and displays, this latest update now supports the Colossus, which incorporates the latest touch technology from our long-term partner Zytronic.

The Colossus is our largest touch table with more than enough room to support up to eight simultaneous users. It is a popular choice for museums and public spaces and has been used for exhibits at three different Smithsonian Museums. The addition of tangible support will open up new opportunities for interaction for Ideum and for our many design partners. You can learn more about Tangible User Interfaces by reading our White Paper.

Our initial release of Tangible Engine for the Colossus supports 5 unique tangibles (our 43”, 49”, 55”, and 65” displays support up to 9 objects). The tangible objects are 3D-printed from conductive materials, and are designed with unique patterns that are then recognized by the Tangible Engine software. These unique patterns can be detected by modern projected capacitive touch displays and allow Tangible Engine to operate without optical systems to detect their placement. As we continue to experiment with more custom tangibles, we will grow the supported number of unique patterns.

Tangible Engine has a service-based architecture and includes a visualizer and project templates for both QT/QtQuick and Unity3D. Ideum provides a complimentary copy of Tangible Engine with the purchase of three or more touch tables. Tangible Engine is designed exclusively for use with Ideum multitouch tables. For more information, please contact our sales group. To learn more about Tangible Engine 2.0, visit our website.

We are currently working on the next release of the Tangible Engine SDK, which will include support for Smart Tangibles. We will share more about that release soon.