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Acoustic Sensors Make Any Surface a Touch Pad
An anonymous reader writes "Using cheap acoustic sensors the surface of any 3D object can be instantly made into a touch-sensitive interface capable of tracking two objects at once. Its creators are planning to make hospitals more hygienic — keyboards and mice will be replaced by desks wired to perform as keyboards and touchpads. A video shows it in action [.wmv]."
So what happens when these are built into the furniture and the "mouse" goes bad? Will you need to buy a new desk?
Whatever the touchable surface is, it will have germs.
And NOT because of the poorly paid staff.
The source of germs in hospitals is SICK PEOPLE. Come on folks, how long are we going to let these sickos with their sniffles and oozing infections dirty up our hospitals ? I think we need a fence, and strick jail-the-ill legislation with no possibility of parole.
This is not the first keyboard implementation without a physical keyboard. There have been others that use optics which would be a lot more reliable since accoustics change with simple things such as background noise, the shape of the room, and even the surface being used. The big issue is whether people are comfortable using it. When other implementations have come up, people just didnt like the feel of hitting the solid material. Most slashdotters probably spend a bit of time figuring out what keyboard "feels" best to them just as people do with mattresses. However, I highly doubt anyone has an ideal keyboard that gives no tactile response. Although it may seem simple to change this precedence, I would note the USAs insistance on not using metric, and the fact that we still use QWERTY keyboards that were designed to be inefficient so that typewriters would not jam. I just don't see this past a niche market.
While this point may be true in some cases, it's only part of the issue. There is a significant difference between dirty and unsterile. Cleanliness isn't the real problem, it's sterility.
It is far easier to sterilize a flat durable solid surface than something convuluted and fragile like a keyboard. So, this is a great thing. And of course it has so many many many more applications too.
A better way to improve keyboard hygiene in hospitals would be for everyone to have his own personal keyboard, operated by the hand that holds it and carried in a pocket, wireless of course. Something like mine at chordite.com :-)
But what hospitals really need is a way to sterilize hands up to the elbows in about 3 seconds. Think of boxes in the halls with holes you stick your arms into. When you press a foot pedal the boxes somehow magically *poof* and you're clean. Not perfectly clean of course but as clean as a current surgical scrub. If the boxes were handy enough and safe enough for doctors and nurses to use between visits on their rounds, hospitals wouldn't be infecting everybody like they are now.
It looks interesting, but I wonder if it can be pressure sensetive (i.e. can detect how hard one is pressing on the surface based on the vibrations). I'm thinking of the artistic applications for this as a way to replace expensive Wacom tablets that come in set sizes of just a few inches with a single product that can be set up to simulate a canvas of any size. But in order for that to be a practical replacement for most artists, it would need to be able to sense the force being applied to the surface (for lighter and darker shades or textures to be applied in the brushstrokes).
I wonder if this would also then allow different tools such as actual paint-brushes (which I presume have a different acoustic profile than say, a stylus or a finger) to be used as different inputs to get different brushstrokes. I also wonder what the effective range of these tools could be, as in do they lose detail or accuracy outside a certain distance, or could they be placed at the four corners of a room to track footsteps? Lots of different applications I can think of, but the one most useful to me is the artistic tablet replacement. My keyboard works just fine, and my desk gets a bit too cluttered to want to devote its entirety to becoming a UI system (at least not all the time), but if this tool could be developed to replace the keyboard, mouse, and tablet all at once (and cost-effectively) then I think they could be on to something I'd defintely be interested in.
Shadows are 3D, you just only see the edge -- I'd include the entire space from the dark side of the light-blocking object to the surface on which you observe the shadow as part of the shadow, as any object in that space would reveal the shadow. You could even argue that shadows continue indefinately beyond the surface on which you observe them, as any objects along that path would similarly be shadowed.
But I'd also agree with others that shadows are no more objects than radio waves.