The Interactive Tablecloth
By Emily Conrad 
posted Feb 7th 2005 10:32AM
posted Feb 7th 2005 10:32AM
Without any real explanation of how it works, designers at the Royal College of Art in the UK have created a tablecloth that glows whenever an object is put on it. The halo slowly expands the longer the object is left in place. They say the idea is meant to raise "issues about the desirability of using technology to emphasise existing behaviour," something which we know has been keeping all of you up at night.
thermal reactive clothing? wow, what's next? a man on the moon?
thermal? where did that thought come from?
The article just states 'objects' not 'hot objects'. The only thing that is unclear is the exact mechanism, it does say that it works by sensing weight but not how (piezo perhaps?)
Uuuh! Whole floor of those and i can walk like michael jackson!
Not thermal, electro-luminescent ink, screen-printed onto a flexible substrate.
The position measurement is done by measuring weight loading across each of the table's legs, and triangulating position. They've done a series of weight-sensitive furniture like this.
From the website at http://machen.mrl.nott.ac.uk/Projects/DomesticEnv/weightfurniture.htm#hist
"The transparent flexible vinyl tablecloth measures 180 x 80 cm. It contains an encapsulated matrix of 7 x 18 electroluminescent lamps, each approximately 11cm in diameter, printed in a regularly repeating hexagonal floral design. Weight sensing cups are placed underneath the table legs. A central processor detects changes in table surface weight and translates this into a history of objects. The tablecloth plays out this history as a 'domestic' glowing pattern of graded light beneath the objects."
See also http://www.equator.ac.uk for more on the project as a whole (it's huge).
Bill Gaver gave a talk here in Dundee last week and showed some video of a couple using the tablecloth in their home. The tablecloth took some serious engineering to get going.
Also known as the "Billie Jean" tablecloth...
It's like hypercolor for your kitchen.
i heard it uses magic.
i *still* have a *functioning* hypercolor shirt. found it just the other day when working on moving actually. i'm soooooo wearing it on a regular basis again. YOU JUST WATCH ME.
As geeky as it sounds, I would probably buy one of those if it was released. I think it's kinda cool...
Truthfully, so would I... I wonder how much one would cost?
Makes you wonder how much weight the cloth can handle if it is so sensitive. Also wonder how many colors it will come in.
How cool would it be to build this technology into floors so you can tell if someone's been loitering in a spot for too long?
Or be able to tell who's been waiting the longest?
Or to tell if anything has been in contact with something for a certain time period?
Interesting application ideas from that one...
they need to be marketing this stuff as shelf paper in an inventory control environment.
With the 'growing' of the glow over a period of time, I could see many applications where a visual monitoring of the 'age' of an item on the shelf would be highly beneficial.
I would want this just for the 'cool' factor. I could also see this used in a suspense film. "Look someone else is in the room"