FAA Gets a Big-Screen Touch Table

Matt writes "Northrop Grumman, best known for missile systems and other military gear, has for years been selling the TouchTable as part of what it calls an ' integrated collaboration environment.' They delivered their TouchTable to the US Federal Aviation Administration last month and will showcase their technologies next week at a defense conference in London. There are two versions of the TouchTable; one with an 84-inch screen (1600x1200 resolution), the other with a 45-inch screen (1920x1080 resolution). Moving a hand across the surface pans the display' two fingers moving apart zooms it out; and two fingers moving together zooms it in. This simple interface allows users easily to change a view from miles above the Earth to a detailed layout of a single city block."

Comments

Sounds like an Iphone?

[blantonl]

Sounds to me like a massive iPhone. I wonder if any patents were violated with this thing?

Brilliant

[cpq]

Google Earth + Touch Screen + Plasma = How many billion? Brilliant.

Counter-intuitive zoom?

[meatmanek]

Shouldn't the zoom go the other way, as if you're stretching or shrinking the image?

Re:Counter-intuitive zoom?

[Hennell]

Video on their website seems to show it better.

Re:Counter-intuitive zoom?

[SlowMovingTarget]

Methinks someone was not paying attention to Grover on Sesame Street: "Near! ... (bounce, bounce, bounce)... Far!"

Fingers apart == far == zoom out, fingers together == near == zoom in. If you drew an imaginary rectangle over the physical location being viewed, zooming out would make the rectangle bigger (widening as the GP poster phrased it), and zooming in would make the rectangle smaller over the actual physical location (narrowing). Pretty darn intuitive, if you ask me.

Interface Design

[Dun Malg]

two fingers moving apart zooms it out; and two fingers moving together zooms it in This strikes me as counterintuitive. Perhaps actual testing proved this was the best way, but it seems to me that it's exactly backwards. If you wanted to zoom out, would it not be more logical to place two fingers on two points on the map (say) six inches apart, then have the map zoom out as you "dragged" the two points closer together, and vice-versa?

Re:Interface Design

[AHumbleOpinion]

"two fingers moving apart zooms it out; and two fingers moving together zooms it in"

This strikes me as counterintuitive. Perhaps actual testing proved this was the best way, but it seems to me that it's exactly backwards. If you wanted to zoom out, would it not be more logical to place two fingers on two points on the map (say) six inches apart, then have the map zoom out as you "dragged" the two points closer together, and vice-versa?

Disclaimer, I'm a software developer who has done graphics, perhaps I share the same warped perspective as the designers. Moving the fingers apart to zoom out makes sense to me, you are enlarging the piece of the world/map to be displayed on the display.

Re:Interface Design

[Dun Malg]

Moving the fingers apart to zoom out makes sense to me, you are enlarging the piece of the world/map to be displayed on the display. Enlarging a small piece of the visible map to take up more screen space is usually considered zooming in.

Re:Interface Design

[Dolphinzilla]

I've actually used this touch table and it works exactly like you want, if you rotate your two fingers while pulling them apart it will zoom AND rotate - if you just plant your fingers and rotate them about an imaginary point between your fingers the display will rotate about that point - the interface is very intuitive and easy to master in seconds

Re:Interface Design

[pimpimpim]

It's called the goatse interface. Using two hands two move the point of interest apart enables a closer look.

Re:Interface Design

[tyrione]

Or from the following notion:

You have a Cupboard before you. You are at armslength (your hands are close together with each one holding a cupboard door handle) from the cupboard doors. As you open the doors your arms extend to the left and right and you step forward to look inside the cupboard and at the contents of what lies within.

You don't close a cupboard and get closer to it. You pull away and your arms return to their closed door position.

Re:Interface Design

[Animaether]

Their mental model may be based on this simple notion. Take a balloon with a print on it, like a logo. Don't inflate it, just cut the part with the print on it out. Find a small opening somewhere in your house to view this print through. Now take the piece between two fingers, and stretch it apart. What you see through that small opening is the print getting enlarged. The more you stretch, the bigger the tiny detail in the print becomes. This is akin to zooming in.

Put differently, and within the device's context, say you're viewing the Boston area. Now you want to zoom in on Boston Logan Airport. You put one finger at one corner of the airport, and the other at another corner. Keep in mind that the entire Boston area is currently in view, so your fingers will be spaced fairly closely together. Now to zoom in, I - and GP - would simply move the two fingers apart - perhaps all the way to opposite corners of the device's display. Essentially, the rectangle whose opposite corner boundaries were defined by the two fingertips now get re-mapped to the whatever two corners I specify after my fingers leave the display's surface. Now Boston Logal Airport occupies all of the display. That's zooming in - not out.

I'm sure it will feel intuitive enough once you work with it for a while - but I don't think that necessarily means that it is the -most- intuitive option available.

Re:Interface Design

[th77]

The video in TFA clearly shows people moving their fingers apart to zoom in, and together to zoom out. The article got it wrong. In fact, it looks like that part of the article is from a press release, so that would mean than NG got their own damn system wrong. Idiots.

Re:Interface Design

[streak]

Being a developer of the touchtable, I can tell you that the article is backwards.
You spread your fingers to zoom in, and move them together to zoom out.

Resolution

[russlar]

one with an 84-inch screen (1600x1200 resolution) those are some big-assed pixels.

Re:Resolution

[AaxelB]

This is very true, and it also seems slightly ridiculous that the 84" table has a lower resolution than the 45".

I can see why, though, after looking around a bit. On such a large table, if you're collaborating, you want to be able to see and read what's going on on the other side of the table. If it were more standard-sized pixels, a lot of people couldn't tell for the life of them what their comrade on the other side of the table is pointing at. Granted, ideally we'd have high (good-looking) resolution and just use large fonts and such, but why? It's cheaper to use bigger pixels and it wouldn't add much functionality to upgrade to 6400x4800.

You can see in the first picture in their (pdf) Brochure a dialog box on the table that is a good 12" wide. In order for people all around the table to see and read the window, it all but needs to be huge.

Re:Resolution

[Jugalator]

Speaking of which, I wonder what the largest pixel in the world is.

I couldn't find anything even when Googling it.

Horribly Poor Design: Grease Marks

[reporter]

Anyone who has ever operated a Sony camcorder understands the fundamental design flaw with the military Touch Table. Constantly touching the screen with your hands smudges the screen. Seeing the streaks of grease and the occasion bits of dirt is distracting. In a real-time battle scenario, I would not want to be distracted.

The Touch Table should be modified so that external sensors can detect the motion of the hand about 1 foot away from the screen. Those sensors would then translate the motion into zooms and pans of the image on the screen.

Microsoft Surface

[westlake]

It will be interesting to see if which came first - the FAA touch table or Microsoft's desktop computer. God I hope it was the FAA touch table. It would be too funny to see MS get blown out of the water after their big splash with that thing.

Reading the fine article:

Pressure sensitive surface allows multiple methods of information

Microsoft's Surface uses cameras to track input. The actual tabletop is nothing more than an ordinary acrylic panel used as a rear projection screen.

It should be easy to clean and difficult to break, scratch or stain.

The technology allows non-digital objects to be used as input devices. In one example, a normal paint brush was used to create a digital painting in the software. [In] using cameras for input, the system does not rely on [the] properties required of conventional touchscreen or touchpad devices such as the capacitance, electrical resistance, or temperature of the tool [being] used. Microsoft Surface

Surface can sense and interact with "domino" tagged objects, like a digital camera. What lurks below Micosoft's Surface

The Grumman maxes out at 1600x1200 for an 84" display. To my mind, that seems a little disappointing for a military-grade tactical display.

Surface at 1280x960 for a 30" display.

Other hand gestures?

[Mathness]

Moving a hand across the surface pans the display' two fingers moving apart zooms it out; and two fingers moving together zooms it in. And a two finger "salute" bombs the target.