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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.
They've got this really bizarre idea over there, but they don't seem to have a realistic idea of how it would work in real life devices.
Does anyone have any ideas?
I have been pwned because my
what happens if you leave it in your pocket and sit on it and bend it? then where will you end up?
FP!
Ash nazg durbatuluk, ash nazg gimbatul, ash nazg thraktuluk agh burzum-ishi krimpatul.
or if cell phones can guess what I'm saying as I thumb-type words, why do I need to bend the phone?
"Get Bent"
However, if this is ever marketed with that slogan I'll be shocked and disgusted... and then try to weasel some money out of the deal.
*honk*
This is my sig. It's prescription, I swear. I need it for reading things... on the other side of things
Yes, I know they're small piezoelectric particles to generate voltage when compressed, but those can't last forever. The material of the card might start developing a memory if you bend it too much.
However, this will be kickass if they can make them cheap enough. Imagine: walk up to a vending machine in an airport, buy a little credit-card sized game to occupy you during the flight, and throw it away when the battery runs out. Or have a book on the card - a novel and text output probably won't take up that much memory.
Quarter-bend to the left is "back", quarter-bend to the right is "forward". To close the browser window, just fold and put in your pocket. Rip the display in half to "view source".
Kip Hawley is an idiot.
When computers become too small to be operated by buttons, how will we control them?
Here's a thought... when they get that small, small is no longer the issue... spend some time on improving battery life / screen resolution / feature X.
Send lawyers, guns, and money!
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.
Imagine: walk up to a vending machine in an airport, buy a little credit-card sized game to occupy you during the flight, and throw it away when the battery runs out.
And designing things to be thrown away is good practice?
Nobody considered simple voice recognition?
No, they finally realized it would be really, really stupid (and noisy) to have everyone talking to their PDAs.
Voice recognition is nowhere near as capable as a mouse, keyboard, or even 'bending' for something such as gaming. Imagine playing half-life by having to say "strafe left, start shooting, duck, strafe right, stop shooting, reload, walk, stafe left, shoot, run right"... and thats not even aiming.
:-P
The only way voice recognition could handle a situation like that would to have higher level commands (almost like what you'd find in movies) that would make the game play itself, really. I imagine something like "go forward, explore cautiously... (wait wait wait) (see enemy) attack! aggressive! now evade! (enemy dies)"... i mean. Its basically playing itself (and it certainly could at that point). it'd just be a voice activated aimbot.
Now, about the only thing I think voice recognition is exceptionally good at is dictation of documents...
For everything else, there's [master]card
Finally, I might actually be able to get the all new , redesign, second generation Etch-a-Sketch
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.
This potential problem is what came to my mind immediately as well. However, I do not think it will be as large of a problem as it may at first seem.
It seems, for example, that even bending the device once will result in *some* retention of that bent shape. This establishes what is minimally the initial lower threshold for registering an intentional 'bend'.
However, consider even the common household rubber band. Even if stretched to two or three times its originally length repeatedly, while there will be some net increase in its length at rest, that increase will be only a small fraction of the length it may be repeatedly extended to.
If the flexible portion of this device which is intended to register user input is composed of a similar, though certainly more durable substance, there should be relatively little concern of the device becoming non-functional due to any permanent retention of the extended shape, any time within its useful life.
It would, I suppose, just be a matter of identifying for that particular substance what threshold value for the registering of user input results in the best balance between registering only intentional bends and the corresponding net percentage retention of the extended or bent shape.
"When computer get too small for buttons..."
Reminds me of a Bloom County comic strip where Milo & gang go to the new 3000 theatre mega-cinema or whatever it was called. An announcement comes over the P.A. system: "Due to our recent expansion to 3000 screens, our screen size has shrunk so small it's no longer visible. Please exit to the side."
Unless the device has a different practical use than displaying information (such as playing MP3s or whatever) you're not really going to want something so tiny it's physically unusable. There's something to be said for real buttons that you can press and get positive tactile feedback.
Want to improve your Karma? Instead of "Post Anonymously", try the "Post Humously" option.
... in quicktime format (mplayer can do this) movie can be found here
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?
I think those design people missed out something in their college careers. They missed out learning the principle of diminishing returns.
Being small only gets you so far, and just because you can make it smaller doesn't mean that you should. For example, take your average ball-point pen. Most pens you can buy in a store are about the same size - a good fit for an average hand. Yet, I've seen a few "toy" pens here and there - I remember there was a teeny pen on a swiss army knife I owned. That thing was completely useless. You could attempt to write with it, but your hands cramped up almost instantly. That's probably the reason you don't see a lot of swiss army knives with pens as attachments nowdays. I'm sure there are ways of making a new "interface" for a miniature ball-point pen - for example, if you had nothing to do, you could probably attach it to a thimble and have a half-decent pen. The point is, that people don't do it. There is a thing as TOO small.
I think handheld computers too are getting to their natural sizes with the Palm (and PocketPC) form factors. If you get too much smaller, you start squinting at the screen and there's the whole issue of diminishing utility again. Input into the thing becomes just one of your (many) issues. I had a teensy cell phone for example, and I was in constant fear of losing it in the cushions of my couch. I actually upgraded to a larger phone with more features and a longer battery life - because the size of the previous phone was a nuisance rather than a benefit.
There are two powerhouses in the PDA industry, Pocket PC and Palm.. Sorry guys, Zaurus IMO is still a non-mainstream. Firstly I'm not gonna talk about a specific PDA or specific brand, rather PDA in general.
In general, most people use PDAs for the address book function, and majority of these people uses the Appointment/Calendar function too. Some would also use the notes function too, but seldom. Anything extra, rest assured you can call yourself a power user. I know this for a fact because I used to work in a retail shop selling PDAs
Let's look at features that most users want..
Handy - Small, slim stylish design that you can keep in your shirt pockets. Not something the size of a brick, and weighs like one!
Battery - You want something that can last at least for a few days without charging the battery (One Pocket PC brand got it right finally, by having removable batteries)
Affordability - Most Tom, Dick and Harries don't need the bells and whistles and the extra gadgets like cameras, bluetooth, Wi-Fi, modems, large external storage. Something reasonable is probably the order of the day. All those extras costs money, house-wives don't need most of 'em in order to keep track of their grocery shopping list do they.. So are students, secretaries and bosses, normal users and joes like me ;-P
Most of those who bought brick-like units are usually either power users (who knows what they want) or those who got too much money and wanna show off. I call these PDAs - Show-Off Units.
Sony bendable handhelds, well, Look and see.. Price-wise, if they're out of reach, most joes won't use it. Battery-wise, too short, they're not Palm-Tops nor Pocket PCs, rather Desktop PDAs, since they're perpetually connected to their charger unit. If it is too bulky, hell no, I'm not gonna use it, cuz it won't stay in my pocket. I don't wanna look like a fully packed Llama
In the end, I (and most joe user) want something convenient to use to get day to day tasks done
Will sys-admin for food
And designing things to be thrown away is good practice?
;-)
You keep your used toilet paper?
As long as we have to physically interact with electronic devices with some part of our body there will always be buttons, switches, knobs, dials, etc. I think we are much more likely to see digital versions of these types of interface devices becoming widely adopted. Space is certainly a premium, but with any physical object you always have a back side, for example my dad was recently in Holland and his business partner over there drives a car that has the radio controls on the back side of the stearing wheel, exactly where your fingers rest when you drive.
Not to mention forcing the general public to learn a new way to interface, which we all know is difficult, but these devices are going to have to be extremely well made to withstand all the abuse. With the rapidly dropping quality of consumer-level products I'd be quite wary of purchasing something that by it's very nature would have to go through all that.
sig.
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"
When cars become too small to drive, the only option will be to gently bend them. :)
That's how ridiculous this business of changing the ergonomics to conform to the implementation sounds.
If I had a Pentium-IV equivalent system the size of a quarter that could be powered by a watch battery, you know what I'd do with it? I'd build it into a full-sized IBM keyboard. Or, for more mobility, how about one of those portable Palm keyboards?
I certainly have no desire to bend anything just because the guts are small. Also, if these things are expensive I don't want them to be too small anyway. Too easy to lose.
When computers become too small to operate, the only option will be to gently bend them, and throw them into the garbage.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?