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Flexible Computers in the Future?
An anonymous reader writes "New Scientist is reporting on Sony bendable input devices. When computers become too small to be operated by buttons, how will we control them? The only option will be to gently bend them, according to engineers at Sony's Interaction Lab in Tokyo." The diagrams make it look like a warped Game Boy. Looks pretty cool, though.
Nobody considered simple voice recognition?
i remember there was a controller for the SNES, Genesis, and i think NES called the turbo touch 360 that used a laser sensor on a flat surface instead of the Dpad, i was thinking maybe an updated version of that which detects a finger covering some light emitting gizmo.
or how about connectors which can be fused through skin?
and i've often seen elevator buttons which aren't buttons but solid flat things that seem to only activate when i touch it with my finger (i tried poking one with my keys and it didn't work), i'm not sure how those work but it seems like that could be implemented in a thin device as well.
bending seems like a decent idea but i'm so used to jamming my finger onto things to make things happen.
Seems to me that flexing the device is more complex & difficult and than using buttons. I think they are barking up the wrong tree with this idea!
Cool and useful as I think this'd be, I can just see tourists going insane trying to get one to work. (Or even just finding where they are in the first place.) Lost people with no sense of direction + map = Lost people. Lost people with no sense of direction + map the size of a credit card = Lost people with a crumpled piece of "polymer electronics."
Im not sure the idea of moving a cursor by moving your finger on a small touchpad is the most efficient idea, UI wise. It seems too ungainly, and a pain to use. Touchpads are not as good as a mouse, especially a small one. The only easy way to interface is to touch the screen on the front. Though im not sure how one gets around entering text easily...our current ways of using a stylus, moving a cursor, or pressing tiny keyboard buttons just to enter in some words just doesnt cut it. There has to be an easier and more efficient way of doing this.
Mhh ? I don't really see in which way the problem would be specific to bending devices. In my pocket, a device is as likely to bend as to be compressed (clicking on its eventual buttons).
So it is just a matter of having a locking function or not...
A Touch sensitive pad can work with :click, drag, double tap, tap, and even triple tap, but it cannot understand majically WHICH GODDAMNED finger you are using by using psychic powers.
That is why the Apple Mac OS (no second mouse button idiocy) , and NeXTStep gui (2nd mouse = 1st button unless custom overridden by user after purchase) are ideal for flexible illuminated placemat computers.
This was discussed in 1983.
Apple planned on this over 20 years ago.
That is whay a gui needs to be finger-order insensitive. The COMPLETE gui.
The mouse pointer can be drawn offset half an inch above the estimated center point of your finger tip pressure.
I love Apple. And having a graphical user interface since the Apple Lisa shipped in November 1982 (same month the black and white cassette-drive 64K ram IBM PC shipped for 600 dolalrs at Sears) is a great thing.
I am glad the Apple GUI won... but I am saddened that linux people cannot unclutter their lives and respect one-button plans on a flexible computer placemat computer of 2010.
It is perfectly suited for Apple gui model... unlike MS windows, which has a few actions that REQUIRE two buttons and cannot be implemented on a placemat flexicomputer easily.
This seems like a solution in search of a problem. Using Jot (or other character-at-a-time input methos), you can write on something as small as a watch face.
If they can make a device "bendable" why not just "touchable". No large protruding buttons, but maybe something to sense impact, body heat or electrostatic impulses. My touchpad on my laptop didn't seem to have a large controller chip, if they could microsize that perhaps we could have touchpad-cards?
This is cool. The tourist map thing is fairly obvious, but you could have a range of different cards in your wallet, that you could swap with relatives/mates etc. The book idea is good, magazines & newspapers on card would also work. Go to the counter in the newsagents and get your choice of reading material uploaded. Etcha-sketch not far off the mark, it could be a sketchpad for your use (probs need some kind of stylus tho, extra parts == bad). Games are always good. You could have a photo album one, put it in the place in your wallet where you keep pics of your loved ones, and it could cycle through - a new pic everytime you open your wallet.
I was wondering too much about it.. it happend years before.. but now.. I still think this is the only perfect way:
:)
Have one litle headphone-micro in your ear. And one retina projectors (in your glasses or your heat, or whatever position). So you can see everything what is important, and you can controll with your eyes and your voice.
To call a friend just say "phone" "call" "joe"
and the call is on the way..
or if you want to know where you are, just say "map" "locate" and you will see front of you the map, and your locatinon.. and so on..
this technic is not the future.. it is working nowdays, just not included together.. yet..
I belive, this will be the modern mobile computers future..
or any one know a better one?
There is only one good solution: The simpliest!
Early this year, I saw some fairly sophisticated interaction using a flexible input device called ShapeTape, made by Canada's Measurand. While the company is marketing it as a motion-capture and 3D modeling technology, Tovi Grossman at the University of Toronto's Dynamic Graphics Project has been working under Ravin Balakrishnan to explore other applications for ShapeTape, including as a general input device. For example, you can use it in computer-assisted design or animation to make and perform some fairly complex 3D curves and manipulations in far less time than it would take with keyboards, mice or drawing tablets.
The Association of Computing Machinery's computer-human interaction publication CHI Letters' latest edition includes their paper on the use of ShapeTape (2 MB PDF), which was presented at the ACM CHI 2003 conference on human factors in computing systems along with MPEG demonstration videos. (3 min. basic - 15 MB | 15 min. complete - 190 MB)
Grossman's Web page includes links to other videos and previous papers.
Computer graphics and animation tool-maker Alias|Wavefront also has several videos that featured former chief scientist Bill Buxton demonstrating ShapeTape in use:
And, of course, ShapeTape maker Measurand also has further information and videos.
If you want a large keyboard but don't want to carry around bigger things than your PDA there are fabric keyboards that double as a wrapper case.
Reminds of the variable resistive nintendo power glove .
.
...
Flex resistors that change resistance based on how much
they were flexed , an old idea with a new twist
Not sure what the spatial sensors were though
Ex-MislTech
google "32 trillion offshore needs IRS attention"
Lower tech than most of the solutions popping up, but Namco did release the twisty NegCon controller, which in the future could be part of the time line of this field of devices...
am i the only person who prefers big? :|
all these damm things are getting smaller and some mobile phones i cant see the screen anymore they need to be bigger not smaller
Does this remind anyone else of that picture browser in Blade Runner?