conference in 2011 and this year has been outfitted to track up to sixty fingers. The sensing area expanded from 27 inches to 55 inches. It's also more responsive, tracking at about 120 hertz versus last year's 60.

See ZeroTouch upgrades in .

"Our system scales with cost linearly, while the capacitive sensing in the iPhone and iPad scales with a square of linear area," said Andruid Kerne, an associate professor at the .

Microsoft Surface may be the most popular name associated with tabletop computing, but because of size and price there hasn't been mass adoption. ZeroTouch's footprint is small and one of its biggest benefits is affordability.

"If you were to take a traditional 55-inch LCD television it might cost you $1,500," said research assistant Jon Moeller. "When you put a ZeroTouch sensor on there you might expect to pay $2,100 or $2,200 for that."