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Review Of Upcoming Projection Keyboards
malpern writes "I've written a review of upcoming virtual keyboards based on published reports. There are pictures, descriptions, and details for each of the four major manufactures (Virtual Devices, Developer VKB, Canesta, and Senseboard Technologies)."
I've used a rigid, zero-feedback keyboard (a TouchStream prototype) quite a lot.
For typing tasks like programming and writing articles, it starts off mildly annoying and rapidly becomes agonizingly horrible. However, I was very impressed by the potential for non-typing input, e.g. gestures, dragging the mouse pointer without having to move your hand off the keyboard.
I think these boards would be great for the pda/cellphone market but for heavy workstation use it's just terrible ergonomics -- specially when the perfect keyboard already exists! That's the Kinesis Contour for those trapped in the land of flat keyboards.
Whence? Hence. Whither? Thither.
This is just another solution looking a problem. Keyboard typing is about pressing buttons. Its been that way since the 1st typewriter. This is about simulating that since people know it but the finger suffer too much shock hitting a non spring loaded surface. It becomes a major issue to use this often.
Years ago when I had toys to play with that would do most of this, it became painful typeing on a bit of paper and detecting where the finger where. It just didn't work but looked like a good idea on paper and the sparc 1 could cope with the image processing needed. The major problem was people tend to drift if they don't have the physical feedback so you know where the key "centers" are. Modern keyboards suck with that compared with old 3270 keyboards which had an indent on J & F while the new ones tend to use some sort of raised edge. A projected keyboard won't have either.
A cheap $10 rubber keyboard will roll up and go anywhere and it doens't abuse the finger tips so I don't see these expensive things going anywhere people have a real need to type. The projection things are ok for "yes/no" and "Enter your Name" but not useful for much of anything else.
The collection of distances from the array of pixels provides a 3-D map of the area scanned. Moreover, this device can survey its surroundings more than 50 times every second. Like the pattern projector, the infrared light stays close to the surface. The sensor's view can get blocked if a user hits two keys at once that are exactly in line from the sensor. That happens rarely. But if it does, the keyboard's software makes the shift key "sticky," so even if it gets blocked by a finger on the E, the keyboard will interpret it as the two keys hit together.