First of Their Kind, Ideum Multitouch Tables Featured in Cooper Hewitt Design Museum Renovation

NEW YORK and CORRALES, N.M., Dec. 12, 2014 /PRNewswire/ -- When the doors open for the newly renovated Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum in New York City on December 12, visitors will experience first of their kind multi-touch tables designed and developed in Corrales, New Mexico. While rural New Mexico may seem like an unlikely place to produce advanced technology for a New York museum, let alone the Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum, Ideum, a design and technology firm, has been developing cutting-edge touch tables since 2008.

For the new Cooper Hewitt, Ideum designed and developed four massive 4K UHD 84" multitouch tables along with a half-dozen 55" tables and touch walls.  All-in-all over 2 tons (4,480lbs) of custom high-tech touch tables and screens were shipped from New Mexico to New York City for the New Cooper Hewitt Experience.

The 84" 4K touch tables use projected capacitive touch technology, the same technology found in popular tablets and smart phones.  In addition, these unique touch tables have 10 NFC (near field communication) gateways allowing visitors to "check in" with the museum's interactive pen that allows them to collect and create, and access their activity after their visit. Visitors can draw on the tables and keep track of the objects in the collection that they interact with. The new Cooper Hewitt experience is changing the way in which museum visitors learn about design, making them active participants, encouraging them play designer.

The 84" 4K tables are a first at this size and resolution with capacitive touch technology.  Building in support for the pen and for multiuser interaction provided additional technical and design challenges. Ideum integrated all this new technology into the systems, providing a robust platform allowing up to 8 users to simultaneously interact with each large multitouch table.

"Our experience in developing, reliable touch table products, has helped us develop these custom systems for Cooper Hewitt," said Paul Lacey, CTO of Ideum. "Everything about these systems is unique, many of the components weren't even available until this summer. We were designing these touch tables in anticipation of new technology. We developed whole new approaches in material engineering to create a breakthrough touch fidelity experience on an unprecedented scale."

Ideum worked closely with engineering teams from GE and SistelNetwoks, as well as design teams from the Cooper Hewitt, Local Projects, Diller Scofidio + Renfro, in a collaborative effort.

Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum is located at 2 East 91st St. in New York City. The new Cooper Hewitt opens to the public on December 12.

About Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum
Founded in 1897, Cooper Hewitt is the only museum in the nation devoted exclusively to historic and contemporary design. The museum educates, inspires and empowers people through design, presenting compelling educational programs, exhibitions and publications. International in scope and possessing one of the most diverse and comprehensive collections of design works in existence, the museum's rich holdings range from Egypt's Late Period/New Kingdom (1100 B.C.) to the present day and total more than 210,000 objects.

Cooper Hewitt is located at 2 East 91st Street at Fifth Avenue in New York City. The museum is currently closed, and will reopen to the public on Dec. 12, 2014, following a three-year renovation project.

For further information, please call (212) 849-8400, visit Cooper Hewitt's new website at: www.cooperhewitt.org and follow us on www.twitter.com/cooperhewitt,
www.facebook.com/cooperhewitt and www.instagram.com/cooperhewitt.

About Ideum
Ideum (www.ideum.com) is a 15-year-old privately held company based in Corrales, New Mexico. Ideum designs and produces integrated and hardened large-scale multitouch hardware and develops interactive software for museums, educational institutions, government agencies, and Fortune 500 companies. It has developed multitouch tables and screens since 2008 and they have been sold in 29 countries. The company has developed and sells Gestureworks (www.gestureworks.com), a cutting-edge multitouch and motion tracking software environment. 

Contact:
Kayla Gilmore
505-792-1110 ext.1
[email protected]

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SOURCE Ideum

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