./trilaterate: A Fabrication Pipeline to Design and 3D Print Hover-, Touch-, and Force-Sensitive Objects

Martin Schmitz, Martin Stitz, Florian Müller, Markus Funk, Max Mühlhäuser

Abstract: Hover, touch, and force are promising input modalities that get increasingly integrated into screens and everyday objects. However, these interactions are often limited to flat surfaces and the integration of suitable sensors is time-consuming and costly. To alleviate these limitations, we contribute Trilaterate: A fabrication pipeline to 3D print custom objects that detect the 3D position of a finger hovering, touching, or forcing them by combining multiple capacitance measurements via capacitive trilateration. Trilaterate places and routes actively-shielded sensors inside the object and operates on consumer-level 3D printers. We present technical evaluations and example applications that validate and demonstrate the wide applicability of Trilaterate.