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Hi, I'm Scientific American podcast editor Steve Mirsky. And here's a short piece from the July 2018 issue of the magazine, in the section called Advances: Dispatches from the Frontiers of Science, Technology and Medicine.

大家好，我是《科学美国人》播客编辑史蒂夫·米尔斯基。下面是收录在本杂志2018年7月刊“进展：科学、技术和医学前沿快报”栏目中的一篇短文。

Smart Walls by Prachi Patel

《智能墙》 作者：普拉杰·帕特尔

The right paint can add pizazz to your walls—and now it can also make them smarter. Researchers recently converted a wall into an outsize trackpad and motion sensor¹ by using low-cost conductive paint to create a large grid² of electrodes.

合适的油漆能令你的墙面增加光彩——现在还能让墙面更加智能。最近，研究人员用低成本导电涂料创造了一个大型电极网格，将一面墙变成了一个特大号触控板和运动传感器。

Such a smart wall can sense human touch and track gestures from a short distance. It can also detect the locations of appliances and whether they are switched on. The technology could someday turn on lights when a person enters a room, track a player's motion in an interactive³ video game or monitor a child's television use. Yang Zhang, a computer science doctoral student at Carnegie Mellon University helped to create the concept.

这种智能墙能感应到人类的触碰，追踪近距离的手势。它还能探测到家电的位置以及家电是否启动。未来某一天，这项技术能在有人走进房间时打开灯，并在交互式视频游戏中追踪玩家的动作或监控儿童的电视使用情况。卡内基梅隆大学的计算机科学博士生Yang Zhang帮助研发了这一概念。

To create the high-tech⁴ surface, Zhang and his colleagues applied⁵ painter's tape in a lattice pattern to a 12-by-eight-foot wall, then coated it with commercially available conductive nickel paint. Removing the tape left a pattern of diamond-shaped electrodes, which the researchers connected using a grid of thin copper⁶ tape strips. They affixed⁷ a vinyl sticker in the middle of each diamond to insulate the electrodes from one another. Finally, they wired the strips to a custom-built circuit board and covered the wall with standard latex paint. The entire project took four hours and cost less than $200.

为了创造出这种高科技的墙面，Zhang和同事在一面12英尺X8英尺的墙上用油漆匠的胶带贴出网格图案，然后将商用导电漆料涂在上面。去掉胶带后，墙面上会留下一个个菱形图案的电极，随后研究人员会用网状薄铜箔胶带将电极连接起来。他们在每个菱形电极中间贴上乙烯基贴纸，使电极彼此隔离。最后，他们用金属丝将铜箔胶带和一块定制电路板连接起来，并在墙面涂上标准的乳胶涂料。整个工程耗时四个小时，花费不到200美元。

Zhang and his colleagues at Disney Research presented the Wall at the CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing⁸ Systems in Montreal.

Zhang和他在迪士尼研究所的同事在蒙特利尔举行的CHI计算系统中的人类因素会议上展示了这面墙。

In tracking a touch or gesture, the wall functions similarly to a smartphone screen. The circuit board prompts the electrodes to emit an electric field; when a person's body intercepts⁹ this field, it triggers a measurable change in current at the nearby electrodes.

在追踪触碰或手势方面，这面墙的作用类似于智能手机屏幕。电路板促使电极释放电场；当人体介入这个电场时，会触发附近电极产生可测量的电流变化。

In the wall's appliance-detection mode, the power is turned off, and the electrodes act as an antenna¹⁰ to passively pick up electromagnetic waves emitted by nearby devices. The researchers detected iPads up to 6.5 feet away from of the wall; fans and floor lamps could be sensed from about 10 feet.

在这面墙的“家电探测模式”中，电源被切断，电极会像天线那样，被动地接收附近设备发出的电磁波。研究人员探测到了距离墙面6.5英尺的iPads；而距离墙面约10英尺的电扇和落地灯也可以被感应到。