A Flexible Touch Switch with Arbitrary Shape and Arrangement

Conventional touch switches are restricted to use on a display, wall or other flat surfaces. Thus, theycannot be applied to many things with any different shapes. In addition, since the traditional touch switch isembedded to a product, the user is unable to change its shape and position after shipment. In this paper, wepropose a touch switch whose shape and location can be arbitrarily changed. Since each touch switch is made ofan electric conductive film like aluminum foil, the touch switches with many different shapes can be put onto anysurfaces. The preliminary experiments show that touch switches made of aluminum foil with different shapes canbe pushed correctly by human finger.