Project case study
A projection globe that responds to touch
We made a projection sphere touch-sensitive using an infrared camera hidden inside it — the interface is drawn and pressed directly on the globe.
- Client
- Ministry for the Development of the Russian Far East and Arctic
- Venue
- Eastern Economic Forum 2021, Vladivostok
- Completed
The challenge
A projection sphere shows content from inside but cannot feel touch. The buttons on it are distorted by the spherical projection, so ordinary touch technology does not apply.
What Awake! delivered
An infrared camera with a wide-angle lens looks at the sphere from inside. We wrote the touch detection ourselves: fingers on the surface are found by changes in pixel brightness, and the points are mapped from the equidistant projection back to the interface. Instead of chasing the exact centre of every touch, each button gets an active zone — that made presses reliable for any visitor.
Outcome
The touch sphere worked at the Eastern Economic Forum 2021, and spherical touch screens have been part of our toolkit ever since.
Technologies and methods
Infrared camera with a fisheye lens, custom touch detection, equidistant projection mapping, Unity