Virtual Keyboard

Archfeld sent a strange piece of technology called the Senseboard which is a portable keyboard, except that there's really not any keys. Or a board. And it can communicate via RF for all your strange wearable applications.

Comments

I habr onw

[gosand]

^I habr onw, it id v3ry cppl. I an usinf it right noq! Bit I an mot a veru good tyoist. :-)

Hmm

[Man of E]

I wonder how the keyboard "knows" when I'm actually trying to press on a key, versus when I'm just resting my fingers in the home position?
What if I need to grab a drink? What if I briefly wave my hands around? What if I scratch my head because I don't know what to type next?

I'm not sure that the language recognition and "artificial intelligence" they proclaim this thing has would make it comfortably usable, even for short periods of time. Too many little inconveniences, and things you'd have to stop doing while having a keyboard permanently attached to your hands.

Douglas Adams Strikes Again

[dwdyer]

Imagine the effort it will take to not type, if every movement is interpreted as a potential keystroke. I was reminded of this passage from the Hitchhiker's Guide:

A loud clatter of gunk music flooded through the Heart of Gold cabin as Zaphod searched the sub-etha radio wavebands for news of himself. The machine was rather difficult to operate. For years radios had been operated by means of pressing buttons and turning dials; then as the technology became more sophisticated the controls were made touch-sensitive - you merely had to brush the panels with your fingers; now all you had to do was wave your hand in the general direction of the components and hope. It saved a lot of muscular expenditure of course, but meant that you had to sit infuriatingly still if you wanted to keep listening to the same programme.

Senseboard: sounds good but works poorly

[Eutope]

I saw the virtual keyboard on the comdex floor. It sounds like a great concept, but did not appear to function with a high degree of speed and accuracy. THe basic concept is interesting -- using neural networks to correlate the electrical signals from muscle movements with corresponding strokes on a keyboard, but more work needs to be done on the algorithms. The 2-man team behind the board is hoping to develop a product by march that could be used by anyone without training. But in the demo, only one person on the development team was able to use the keyboard, which seems to indicate that it will be more difficult to create a system that will work for a large population of users without training. That said it is an interesting concept that needs more work, and will probably require each user to train the keyboard for their movements, much like people do with continuous speech recognition programs today.

Re:Cool, but...

[Anonymous DWord]

That's similar to the problem the military had when testing out the F-16, which has electric controls- the stick didn't move at all. Pilots kept complaining about it, so they put a little play into it, even though technologically they didn't need it. People like physical responses to the things they touch.