Touch switch
electrical switch which is activated by being touched

A touch switch is a type of switch that only has to be touched by an object to operate. It is used in many lamps and wall switches that have a metal exterior as well as on public computer terminals. A touchscreen includes an array of touch switches on a display.
A touch switch is the simplest kind of tactile sensor.
Types
There are three types of switches called touch switches:
Capacitance switch
A self-capacitance switch needs only one electrode to function. The electrode can be placed behind a non-conductive panel such as wood, glass, or plastic. The switch works using body capacitance, a property of the human body that gives it great electrical characteristics. The switch keeps charging and discharging its metal exterior to detect changes in capacitance. When a person touches it, their body increases the capacitance and triggers the switch.
Unlike self-capacitance, mutual capacitive touch is based on capacitance changes between two electrodes.
This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “Touch switch” as electrical switch which is activated by being touched. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.
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Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Dec 5, 2024. The linked authority identifier is Q7828656. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference.
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This entry incorporates text from “Touch switch” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.