Image Processing Algorithms for DI-method Multi Touch Screen Controllers

Large-sized multi-touch screen is usually made using infrared rays. That is because it has technical constraints or cost problems to make the screen with the other ways using such as existing resistive overlays, capacitive overlay, or acoustic wave. Using infrared rays to make multi-touch screen is easy, but is likely to have technical limits to be implemented. To make up for these technical problems, two other methods were suggested through Surface project, which is a next generation user-interface concept of Microsoft. One is Frustrated Total Internal Reflection (FTIR) which uses infrared cameras, the other is Diffuse Illumination (DI). FTIR and DI are easy to be implemented in large screens and are not influenced by the number of touch points. Although FTIR method has an advantage in detecting touch-points, it also has lots of disadvantages such as screen size limit, quality of the materials, the module for infrared LED arrays, and high consuming power. On the other hand, DI method has difficulty in detecting touch-points because of it's structural problems but makes it possible to solve the problem of FTIR. In this thesis, we study the algorithms for effectively correcting the distort phenomenon of optical lens, and image processing algorithms in order to solve the touch detecting problem of the original DI method. Moreover, we suggest calibration algorithms for improving the accuracy of multi-touch, and a new tracking technique for accurate movement and gesture of the touch device. To verify our approaches, we implemented a table-based multi touch screen.