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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.
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.
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.
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.