Hands Off For $100,000 HP ‘Wall Of Touch’

Are you the owner of a large corporation? Or do you have $100,000 spare and enjoy making sure people know it? Then the HP ‘Wall of Touch’ should be your next purchase.

Unveiled this week, the Hewlett Packard devices ties together nine 1080p resolution touch screens for 129 inches total length. It displays news, runs video chats, lets you update Twitter – and does this without needing you to touch the screen.

Hewlett Packard integrated touch screen technology into their laptops back in 2007. Though the screens were pristine, the same could not be said of the fingers pressing on them. This was fine – as long as consumers harboured ambitions to become window cleaners.

Yet for publicly displayed touch screens – bought for prestige - it was necessary that they remain immaculate. The ‘Wall of Touch’ hence senses the user’s presence – responding to gestures made near the screen, making touch redundant.

It does this using optical cameras and a magnetic strip, rather than the capacitive overlays familiar in touch screens. A z800 workstation keeps the screens ticking over.

Prototypes of the gesture-sensitive screens are already displayed at the NBA Headquarters and the Continental Airlines counter at Houston Airport. Yet according Phil McKinney (speaking in The Wall Street Journal video above) Hewlett Packard have received several requests to build more of the $100,000 screens.

When they’re made commercially available in 2011, interested parties will be able to spring for cheaper versions. Yet for features like HD video conferencing, the hefty price tag will remain.