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.

Comments

Jeff Han's work at NYU and Perspective Pixel

[orospakr]

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.

DIY Multi Touch

[Picass0]

http://tinker.it/now/2007/02/28/multitouch-table-e xperiment/

        * 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- multi-touch-table/
http://www.slashgear.com/make-your-own-multitouch- projected-table-284137.php

That's not the principle of a camera

[Nymz]

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!!!

Re:Applications for the Table

[Irish_Samurai]

Man, I can think of a ton of things that I could write myself using XNA.

• Specialized drink glass code that you could play drinking games with (russian roulette comes to mind)
• Almost every board game ever made
• Air Hockey
• A MTG interface
• If there was a way to start manufacturing items, or self encoding, with the domino encoding on them, writing an app that queries wikipedia when the item is placed on it to give you a neato little "Identify" effect
• Take the same idea as above, but it allows you to purchase said item directly from the vendor by tapping you credit card on the table. Cool if you have people visiting or if you are at someone elses house.
• Another layer of immersion with certain types of digital media (travel shows can display interactive maps without using up viewing real estate, ect...)
• Multi user story telling - Essentially choose your own adventure where everyone was a character and chose from a list of actions to dynamically create a story or show.
• Virtual turntables
• A real time map of my house with live feeds from webcams actually playing in the roomspace
• A tool that allows you to generate custom tabletop game boards and rule structures on the fly. Lego men now have another use!
• A visual warehouse management tool
• Virtual home decorating swatches (although the screen and projection tech may need to catch up on that one)

I could go on and on. None of this is really mindblowing, but there could be a very decent cottage industry popping up around this one item alone.