by Paul H. Dietz, Benjamin Eidelson, Jonathan Westhues and Steven Bathiche
This UIST article is devoted to describing how to manufacture a cost effective pressure sensitive keyboard and some of its application advantages. A design is proposed that is very similar to the current way of manufacturing keyboards that due to a slight design change will allow the measure being used on a key. Some of the applications they discuss that can be used to help improve things such as gaming, instant messaging and typing. In gaming they point out that with their new design gamers will not run into a problem with ghosting, which is where a set of three or more keys are pressed that exist on the same row and same column which in turns hides the pressing of one of the keys. For instant messaging they suggest ways of configuring pressure sensitivity to control style and size as you type. For typing they discussed the ability to sense the amount of pressure that is applied in order to determine if a key was meant to be pressed or only touched while reaching for another key. One of the other major advantages of this type of keyboard is that it will only affect a users use of the keyboard if the correct software is setup to interpret their typing.
I found this paper very interesting and kind of surprising. As a gamer I can see the tremendous advantages to having a keyboard that can interpret how fast you want to run or how far you want to throw a grenade just by the amount of pressure applied to the keyboard. Some faults I find with this idea is that until the ability to use the readings from this keyboard are made available in the software such as instant messengers, games, and word processors the ability to capitalize on the advantages on this innovation will be very limited. I would say that the next step in this work should be the push for wide spread adoption in manufacturing of this keyboard and the program changes needed to make the most use from it in current applications.
This UIST article is devoted to describing how to manufacture a cost effective pressure sensitive keyboard and some of its application advantages. A design is proposed that is very similar to the current way of manufacturing keyboards that due to a slight design change will allow the measure being used on a key. Some of the applications they discuss that can be used to help improve things such as gaming, instant messaging and typing. In gaming they point out that with their new design gamers will not run into a problem with ghosting, which is where a set of three or more keys are pressed that exist on the same row and same column which in turns hides the pressing of one of the keys. For instant messaging they suggest ways of configuring pressure sensitivity to control style and size as you type. For typing they discussed the ability to sense the amount of pressure that is applied in order to determine if a key was meant to be pressed or only touched while reaching for another key. One of the other major advantages of this type of keyboard is that it will only affect a users use of the keyboard if the correct software is setup to interpret their typing.
I found this paper very interesting and kind of surprising. As a gamer I can see the tremendous advantages to having a keyboard that can interpret how fast you want to run or how far you want to throw a grenade just by the amount of pressure applied to the keyboard. Some faults I find with this idea is that until the ability to use the readings from this keyboard are made available in the software such as instant messengers, games, and word processors the ability to capitalize on the advantages on this innovation will be very limited. I would say that the next step in this work should be the push for wide spread adoption in manufacturing of this keyboard and the program changes needed to make the most use from it in current applications. 
I think it would be really cool to get this keyboard actually integrated with the software we use. Patrick W. in his blog makes a good point that many people won't buy this keyboard until it is actually integrated with much of the software that people use. It makes me wonder if this keyboard will just be like a normal keyboard with programs that don't have the pressure capability.
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