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A Look Beneath the 'Surface'
Hajsky writes "Ars Technica takes a closer look at Microsoft's new "Surface" tabletop device. Turns out that Surface isn't actually a touchscreen at all, but uses five cameras located in the table's base to record movement and touch. 'The five cameras are near-infrared devices, but that's not because they are trying to read heat signatures from fingertips (or other body parts) on the table. Instead, it's because the entire surface of Surface is bathed in light; by illuminating the top of the table, the cameras can easily see when things are placed on it. Shining colored light across the surface of the table would spoil the effect that Microsoft wants, so near-infrared light is used for invisible illumination.' The whole setup runs on a Core 2 Duo and off-the-shelf hardware, and can handle 52 simultaneous touches." jfanning wrote with a link to an overview of similar technology used in the Helsinki 'CityWall'. The article she provides discusses the unique public display, and has an in-depth video on the way these kinds of setups work.
The video in yesterday's post DID say that the whole thing was run by five cameras. Doesn't it still make a touchscreen if stuff happens when you touch it? Why woudl it be any less of a touch screen if it sees you touchign it instead of feeling it?
Jeff Han lead project at NYU to produce multi-touch display technology and some demo applications.
Take a look at the original work at NYU: http://cs.nyu.edu/~jhan/ftirtouch/
And the spin-off company by the same guys to develop the technology: http://www.perspectivepixel.com/
Very cool stuff. If you look closely, you can tell that they're running it on GNU/Linux.
Hopefully, they'll chose to collaborate with the X and kernel guys to create proper generic interfaces for multi-touch pointing device input.
http://tinker.it/now/2007/02/28/multitouch-table-e xperiment/
- multi-touch-table/- projected-table-284137.php
* 1 panel of plexiglass 8mm thickness
* 2 strips of IR LEDs (18 LED per strip)
* 2 sheets of tracing paper
* 1 projector
* 1 mirror
* 1 analog camera sensitive to IR light
* 1 IR filter for the camera
* 1 computer
The traking was done using vvvv. http://vvvv.org/tiki-index.php
==============
Also See:
http://www.engadget.com/2007/03/01/build-your-own
http://www.slashgear.com/make-your-own-multitouch
So I wonder if I got six of my friends and we all touched the Surface at the same time with all of our fingers. Would that produce the Blue Surface Of Death? Or would it drive the bloody thing psychizo?
I can't help but wonder how they will compensate for parallax between users' eyes, fingertips, and the screen objects. I'd imagine that the display panel will be relatively thick for structural reasons and that most users will be sitting far off the central axis of the table (i.e., the coffee-table scenario). This means that the image on the screen will be displaced with respect to the line sight from eyeball to fingertip. Moreover different people sitting around the table will see different parallax displacements between fingertips and the screen. Without some compensation for this, the device will be frustrating to use because it won't be intuitive as to where to touch the table top to "touch" an underlying display object. People will often touch the screen where they think they should only to find they've grabbed the object next to the one they really wanted.
P.S. Acrylic is a horrible choice of material for the top as it scratches too easily.
Two wrongs don't make a right, but three lefts do.
Does anybody remember the HP touchscreen computer (from back in the Lisa days) which bombed miserably because people couldn't hold their arms up for hours on end? The thing about a mouse or trackball is that a little motion produces a lot of motion of the cursor - without fatigue.
No folly is more costly than the folly of intolerant idealism. - Winston Churchill
A camera doesn't just detect touch, it can detect movement, objects, people, etc. For example, if you where in a conference room, and someone lifted a chair to throw, then the cameras could identify the object being thrown, who is throwing it, and whom it was aimed at, and then play the appropriate sound file DUCK.wav!!!
Could this be a forerunner of a gaming tabletop? All the terrain, units and record keeping are kept for you as you play on a largish surface. Could be pretty cool.
If brevity is the soul of wit, then how does one explain Twitter?
Or you could install an electrical outlet into the floor... just a thought.
and i doubt much would happen if you spilled something, unless it seeped in through cracks...
Drop a pack of playing cards on it?
The cameras and the IR light source are all inside of the table. You can see this from the diagrams. Nice try though.
If you understood the implications at all you would see that there are benefits for collaborative computing. Have you ever sat around a table (implying the involvement of others) with a pile of photos? Without multitouch you can't pull off the same level of interactivity with a computer screen.
Yes yes, there are fairly ancient examples of similar interfaces - but none of them have made it to the home or even business market, so this is an utterly irrelevant datum.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
The more I think about it, this table (or whatever they end up calling it) could be the computing device that finally succeeds in finding its way into peoples' living rooms. People don't want to compute off of their TV, they only want their TV to display things, that's why every attempt to combine the internet with a TV has pretty much failed. But imagine this device somehow integrated into your coffee table and using it to order and pay for a pizza, using it to control your home lighting and thermostat, using it to look at photos, magazines, catalogues, pay your bills, or using it to sort through your home media library of music and movies. The list goes on and on. The technology will have to get better, the cost will have to come down, it will have to be simple to use, and the applications will have to be developed flawlessly, but I actually think Microsoft could pull it off. If Apple created this people would be gushing over it because they would know that Apple would succeed in doing all of the above. Microsoft should pour a lot of money and resources into this, because they might be on to something big. I hope they pull it off; there isn't enough innovation out there these days, too many copy cat devices. It's time for something new and this could be it.
The article mentioned that the device uses a rear projector for the screen, so they could easily have the scattering surface (what the image is projected onto) be the topmost layer (or beneath a very thin protective layer), resting on top of the thick structural portion (transparent glass or plastic).
Oh, great. So my carpet becomes the power cord and my coffee spill now becomes my death.
Global symbol "$deity" requires explicit package name at line 2. - If only $scripture started "use strict;"
The projector resolution is currently 1024 x 768, according to the Popular Mechanics article. The "touchscreen" camera resolution works out to about 1280 x 960. Not exactly high; hopefully this can be improved by the time I need to replace my coffee table...
There's some good details in that article, a nice diagram and some more in-depth videos too.
Why would anyone engrave "Elbereth"?
I imagine those who can afford a $5-10k Surface computer can also afford to have it cleaned regularly, and more than likely will place it somewhere that dirty people can't very well afford to be very often. They might even provide little monitor cleaning wipes right there at the Surface to let you manage your germ phobia as you see fit!
Another desperate struggle to hate something neat because it's from MIKKKRO$OFT. Sigh. Must be hell with that woman -- she won't touch anything "dirty?" Yikes.
everything in moderation
"when they get this stuff to work with a brush I'll really be impressed."
Watch the videos at surface.microsoft.com and prepare to really be impressed. They use a paintbrush on it.
everything in moderation
I've been waiting for something like this for a couple years now, since I've started working as a draftsman. The amount of paper that companies use for mailing out proposals/revisions/mark-ups is ridiculous. Now they can e-mail a drawing package to whomever, and they can then view at least Arch D drawings (24"x36") easily, and could even use a "red pen" to mark up drawings, and then e-mail the revised drawing package back.
At that point, you could even re-introduce the "drafting table" with integrated AutoCAD or similar. I would love to see this sort of thing as mandatory as a plotter.
On the other hand: Your cat will piss on the floor only once.
Have gnu, will travel.