Dutch develop world's largest touchscreen

Behold the largest touchscreen the world has ever seen, probably. Here's a video of it in action.

To create the "Reality Touch Theatre", engineers from the University of Groningen in the Netherlands combined 16 infrared lights and six cameras, along with the 3mm thick, 10 x 2.8m curved acrylic screen, which is the key component of the university's existing 3D theatre.

Six HD projectors behind the screen produce the image. The diffuse IR illumination bathes the rear of the screen in invisible light. The cameras, also mounted behind the screen, detect the tiny amounts of infrared light reflected back from the screen when a person touches it.

A computer processes the information from the cameras, allowing it to detect up to 100 simultaneous touches.

The screen was developed, the boffins say, to aid research into geographic information systems, but it paves the way for lectures and presentations that are far more interactive and engaging than your average overheard projector can manage, let along chalk and blackboard. ®