Slashdot Mirror
LCD Screen With Embedded Optical Sensors
dk3nn3dy writes "Sharp has developed a LCD display with optical sensors built into the displays pixels, without requiring a touch-sensitive film to be bonded on top of the regular screen. The optical sensor is similar to that used in scanners, allowing for notes or business cards to be scanned by the screen itself. As the optical recognition technology is built into the pixels it also simplifies tactile recognition based on simultaneously touching multiple points. Future uses include fingerprint authentication on the screen of your mobile phone or PDA, or iPhone style touch recognition. Volume production will start next spring."
Future uses include fingerprint authentication on the screen
I heard development was funded almost entirely by Windex.
I wonder if this technology could be used to two-way displays? Instead of a discrete camera, just have the whole screen be an interferometry based "camera". Video phone where you're looking at each other instead of slightly off to one side...
Aside from the obvious concerns; this sounds like a great tech that could allow ....
shit everything I can think of is evil..
sorry. =)
"The price good men pay for indifference to public affairs is to be ruled by evil men." ~Plato (427-347 BC)
Now in full color, real time, and high resolution.
I recall a ID-10T report about a user holding up a document to the screen so the "Techie" could see it on-line or something to that effect. Sounds like that story will become anachronistic .
"Enjoy what you're doing! If it becomes drudgery, you're doing it wrong!" - Jim Butterfield
This reminds me of the old tech-support urban legend of the user holding a page up to the screen and hitting "Print".
How do I see the screen to click the 'Scan' button when I've got the document in front of it?
No trees were harmed in the posting of this message. However, a great number of electrons were terribly inconvenienced.
I'm sure I've seen an Apple Inc. patent for a device that does this. It might even have been posted here on Slashdot.
Hopefully these sensors only work up close like a scanner, rather than like a webcam.
...will no longer be ridiculed for using whiteout on the screen?
This reminds me of that old 1995 email joke about having a scanner in your screen, and you could hold your face up to it and it would take your picture. Of course, all it did was load a picture of a monkey and said this was you.
Stick your thang to the sreen which activates an server side action and the girl in the movie puts her lips on your thang.
by TheSpoom (715771) Uncaring Linux user here. I have nothing to add to this but please continue. *munches popcorn*
--George Orwell, "1984"
W
-------------------
This is my SIG. There are many like it, but this one is mine.
All you need is the right software to access it. Fortunately, there are several websites out there that allow you to do this - e.g. amazingcamera.com
So now there can be a transcript of what you look at that is matched up with who was looking at it with a picture of the face overlayed on the screen for BigBrother to use as he wishes. Once again, all technology advances are really sharp double-edged swords.
The more tech I use the better I like writing in the sand on a beach...
Imagine all those pron websites "watching" all those wankers..
Big Brother will get a new swing in it's name..
So not only are people going to be ENCOURAGED to constantly touch and smudge my screen, but I'll have to worry about reformatting my hard drive when I take a cleaning cloth to it...
Is this even new technology? a 3.5" screen with optical sensors so that you can multitouch it to your hearts content. Isn't that what an iPhone is anyway? Sure the screen may stare into your soul and big brother will be able to keep tabs on you, provided your incriminating evidence is lying on the screen.
... if this were combined with an 2nd generation iPhone and Delicious Library. It'd be like a handheld barcode scanner to catalog all your stuff. Oh wait, still no SDK.
This scanning screen reminds me of Apple's old conceptual project "Knowledge Navigator." In one scene of the video, a man is learning to read with the assistance of the device, he takes a newspaper article and wipes it across the screen. The computer scans it and gives him a reading lesson from the scanned article.
The Knowledge Navigator project was 20 years ago. Many of the ideas in the video have already become reality, this scanning screen might be the next one.
LCD screen observes YOU!
The patent:P TO1&Sect2=HITOFF&d=PG01&p=1&u=%2Fnetahtml%2FPTO%2F srchnum.html&r=1&f=G&l=50&s1=%2220060007222%22.PGN R.&OS=DN/20060007222&RS=DN/20060007222
http://appft1.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=
It definitely seems like a similar concept.
Interesting... Coincidentally, Planar demoed a type of monitor like this in the Emerging Technologies room at SIGGRAPH 2007. It sounds like this Sharp monitor uses embedded sensors, but the Planar one just uses one of the transistors in the TFT matrix as an phototransistor. I tried one out and it was pretty neat. One of the drawbacks right now is that shadows causes problems when trying to determine if a user has pressed a certain part of the screen. Furthermore, this sensor requires some sort of illumination, such as a lamp or something shining on the display. They talked about perhaps integrating some sort of microlens system to focus on a particular plane, such as right above the screen, to highlight objects in that plane.
One neat thing they did was place a document on top of the monitor and turned off the surrounding lights. If the monitor displayed a pure white image, the resulting sensor readout gave you a (low-quality) scan of the document.
A little to much like 1984 for my tastes although it seems this technology is pretty cool. It's all in how it's used. I wonder if they could implement this in screens without users knowing. That is the scariest part I think. Still, hiding a camera in a standard tv wouldn't be that hard so no huge deal unless cable companies begin giving televisions away for nothing or something suspicious like that.
At what price learning? At what cost wisdom? The price is a man's peace of mind, and the cost is his life.
"The optical sensor is similar to that used in scanners, allowing for notes or business cards to be scanned by the screen itself. "
Darn, I guess Penn & Teller's Vidi-Kopy gag can't be considered fiction anymore.
What's worse was the old UNIX problem with anyone able to access the microphone and speakers on a remote machine. Had a lot of fun in the office with that one, back in the day. Also, since you could by default run apps on the local console in X, we'd throw up screensavers and xview -display 0:0 various images (like Mike Tyson biting the ear off).
There's nothing better to do with a $300,000 SGI Onyx than to have it meow at you every once in a while.
So there's the guy who thought his cd-rom tray was a cup holder, the lady who thought the mouse was a foot pedal, and the guy who thought you could fax a document by holding it up to the screen.
That last guy should have patented it!
Yo dawg, I heard you like the Ackermann function, so OH GOD OH GOD OH GOD
If somebody were looking for prior art, this could be interesting.
/ Planar-AMLCD-Optical-Touchscreen.pdf
http://www.planar.com/advantages/whitepapers/docs
. waterwingz
In the Harrison Ford movie Air Force One, the security people had a laptop which scanned fingerprints on its screen: http://perso.orange.fr/fingerchip/biometrics/movie s_1997.htm I had a laugh about it at the time ... oh well.
Could this be the beginning of Mirror 2.0? Then we can make products using it that we will never need.
am I the only one who'se reminded of Orwell's tele-screens, here?
The way things are going, it might just happen...
(yes, call me an "Orwell freak" or whatever you want to call me...)
Yes! I've been asking for that exact feature since I got my first notebook PC in 1997.
NO! I've been asking for that exact feature, a touchscreen scanner, since I got my first notebook PC in 1997.
Add the touchscreen.
And, since I've been asking for it since I got my first notebook PC in 1997, please include a "shape memory" layer that physically interacts with my finger on the touchscreen. So onscreen "G"UI widgets get real edges and real 3D interaction, to cue my fingertip gestures.
If they make it a printer on standard (uncoated) A4 (or arbitrary sized) paper, then they're almost done. I'd settle for it projecting a 500W, 5m wide image on a desk, wall or floor. Plugged into AC, of course. I'll get to the battery people later.
--
make install -not war
Anyone remember the handheld pda/phone from that short-lived Earth: Final Conflict TV series? I always envied those handhelds, with the built in camera, videophone, computing/storage unit, color rollup screens and contact scanner.
Ten years later, we've got the camera, the phone, and the storage/computing unit as everyone's personal computing device. Now all we need to do is to integrate the rollup screens and this new invention... and of course, move everyone to Vancouver.
From TFA: "Also, the scanner function can be used to scan in a business card placed on top of the screen, ..."
Frankly, what for ?
Have you ever received a business card with words: "Have a look, but I need it back !" ???
http://www.bash.org/?291262
at least, in one case it will be...
New way to discreetly Photo-Copy Ass.
... electronic silly putty?
All LEDs inversely function as light detectors, even while emitting light. All that is really needed is a display controller that is designed to detect this reverse current flow. It would be interesting to see such an application. The only thing I have seen so far is a traditional LED matrix that works like a touch screen to turn each individual LED on and off.
e stigations.htm
Don't believe me? Here is a primer:
http://mvh.sr.unh.edu/mvhinvestigations/light_inv
LED do that without sensors so OLED might do it as well. ;)
It is known that the electric resistence of a LED is lower when it is lit up externally so if you put something bright near it, the resistence lowers because it receives its own light back. I wonder if it works for organic leds too, so if you can sense the resistence of every pixel on a OLED display you can know if there is something bright in front of each pixel. The image would be B/W I guess but I think it must be cheap and enough sensitive to make multi-touch displays.
White hand palms in colour people might mean evolution thinks further than we do.
Why does an AC have to say it?
In Soviet Russia screen watches YOU!
In Soviet Russia, screen looks at you!
Please think of the children? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fA07Tw4iEFw (skip to 3:16)
You know, with enough R&D, these screens could send back to central control an image of the livingroom audience watching the show. And AC Neilsen might find it quite useful to see you watching the TV shows you say you are watching, which is most likely different from the reponses to the survey you sent in.
Now, if TV central can watch the audience, imagine a future where all your internet-connected appliance display screens keep an eye on you as well.
I predict there will be a run on funny-nose glasses if this future comes about.