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Hitachi Does Microsoft Surface Without the Table
An anonymous reader writes "According to CNET.co.uk, who randomly stumbled into a booth at CES, Toshiba has created a Microsoft Surface-type system without the unwieldy table. 'The StarBoard system is really two technologies in one. Firstly, it features Hitachi's short-throw LCD projector. This is important, because the projector sits mere inches from the interactive surface. This means you get a huge — 50-inch, in fact — bright screen, which doesn't get blocked out by your head as you lean over the table. The image it projects is incredibly high-quality too, and there was no noticeable distortion.' The video attached to the article shows the system in action." It should be noted that the implication that leaning over the table blocks a projection from above is spurious; the Surface projects an image from below. The 'overhead' setup at CES was a camera designed to show onlookers what was taking place on the table.
ICARS -- the interactive touch-screen displays seen on Star Trek: The Next Generation and later shows predicted this as far back as what? 1986 or 1987 or something? And now it's here for real.
I see this as ideal for collaboration. Gather a bunch of people around the big screen and they can all make changes in realtime. Very nice.
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More big ass tables!
This means you get a huge -- 50-inch, in fact -- bright screen, which doesn't get blocked out by your head as you lean over the table.
No, but you do get big shadowhands when you use the touch surface. If they found a way to do this with two projectors, though, you'd probably be able to avoid even that (though alignment/convergence issues would be a bitch).
This guy's the limit!
I'm just waiting for the wii guy to do the same thing for like $5
Instead of your head casting the shadow, your hand will? I think I'd still rather have the rear-projection in that case.
Microsoft has done surface without the table, in fact, that's how the whole tech started off.
See here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xujhFInvyxo
or here:
http://blog.makezine.com/archive/2007/03/microsoft_research_techfe.html
It's the original demonstration from where the current surface stemmed.
A specific table isn't essential to the surface concept.
Microsoft Surface idea not that new? http://www.tgdaily.com/content/view/32389/118/
I just love the openness internet. If Microsoft tried this 10 to 15 years ago, they might have gotten away with it as an original idea. But it is not. Why do you think more politics have to be added to the Patent system? So Microsoft can continue to appear to be innovative when they have faked most of it all along? You don't need to spend 7.1 Billion dollars a year on R&D. Just use Google for free and cut that cost at least by half, if not more! Spend the other half on feeding the poor, or rebuilding from the devastation of Katrina, for example.
Let me get this straight:
You want your ass to cast shadows?
So it's an interactive whiteboard on the table instead of the wall. Aka, activboard, smartboard, mimio.
Well, okay, it's multi-touch instead of single touch, but it's still not *that* fancy.
BTW, those short throw projectors use a crazy fisheye lens to avoid keystoning. From our experience with them in the aforementioned whiteboards, the picture isn't as clear as a regular projector, and it's harder than normal to get good focus. When you're very near to the board, it gets quite noticeable.
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they don't half hard on about the education market for this new projector on some of the other sites mentioning it.
/. and this comment is slightly off topic, so feel free to mode me to oblivion...
I was taught in an old fashioned British school with blackboards, chalk, uniforms and traditional methods. Is it just me who thinks that emphasis on gadgets like this will simply cost schools money and distract from the subject matter of the lesson.
By all means get the whizzy gadgetry, but remember that its no substitute for competent teachers and a well planned curriculum.
Of course this is
I am fascinated with this. But I wonder how much the technology is tied up in patents and IP issues. If competitors can come up with competitive versions maybe not as much as I fear.
Except this video/article is so uninformative that I may have just been seeing an implementation of Microsofts program running on Hitachi hardware.
It says Toshiba in the first line? Guess they meant Hitachi...
CNET for getting the technology wrong or /. for saying it's Toshiba not Hitachi? Standards sinking ...
How hard would it be to project from the bottom? Not hard at all. Then the shadows would be gone.
wouldn't that be 'variatios'?
It should also be noted that it appears the Hitachi can only support two simultaneous touches at a time, while the Surface can currently recognize up to 52 different touches and even specific items with visual codes fixed to them.
I seem to remember this being done in the mid-80s of the last century with a Commodore Amiga and a Live! video digitizer board. If I could be assed to Google it, I suppose I could quickly invalidate any subsequent patent claims
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to move around and zoom into the charts. It was basically a screen mounted into a table (like all those tabletop Video Games from the early late 80's)
If they found a way to do this with two projectors, though, you'd probably be able to avoid even that (though alignment/convergence issues would be a bitch).
Johnny Lee, who is actually mentioned in a post further down, did this already using low cost projectors and surfaces.
Look at Automatic Projector Calibration on his website: http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~johnny/projects/thesis/
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I could do the same with my Lightpen on Atari 2600.
Hitachi makes StarBoard System, i guess someone will soon make a BSD flavored one and call it Ports :)
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I think you'd get backache if you learned of over a Surface-like thing for a while.
Maybe the answer is to flip it up horizontal.
To avoid the cost of a touch screen (or sensors) you might instead use a mouse on a flat surface like a desk.
That would be one awesome system!
i don't know the details of the patent, so perhaps this doesn't apply, but part of the video shows a "pinch" zoom function which I thought apple had patented.
This would be perfect for the assault on the Death Star from the Yavin rebel base.
I saw a projection version of surface in the Microsoft Visitor Center early in 2007 - it was before surface was announced and open to anyone who went in to the visitor center. They had a nice demo using it with Live Maps where you can zoom and scroll around the map.
What I want is not so much a table, but a tilted drawing board. This projection tech can do that. Hell, a nice big DLP/HDMI TV can do that, tilted over and propped up.
What we need is coffee mugs, pens, magazines and other regular objects that can stick on the tilted surface. 3M Post-Its tech to the rescue?
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The actual hardware is not what Microsoft is after with the Surface, but rather the software, development platform and user experience. For all of these prototypes that explore various ways of bringing the image to any big flat surface and to track the user's touch, all of them show you how to use google maps, and then their ad-hoc photo shuffling application, and that's all. None of them has yet any real useful application or complete SDK with hardware support abstracted.
Well, at least now I don't have to worry about people putting their feet up and messing up my table.
"Teach a man to build a fire, and he's warm for a day. Set a man on fire and he's warm for the rest of his life."
It may be that children are paying more attention to the large TV at the front of the room (what these things really are) than they were to the teacher, but my take is that much like the 5-second cuts in current TV shows, bright flashy colors and animation isn't "improving" anyone's attention span. For non-animated, non-colored, non-audio presentation of information (you know, those things called "books" or most of the "real" content on the Internet) this is likely to have an adverse affect. As television clearly shows, it is quite possible to increase attention (what you meant to say) while shortening attention spans (what is happening with TV and things like interactive presentations in the classroom).
I'm a former teacher and was the "technology mentor" at my school. During my time teaching one of my greatest frustrations was watching elementary school teachers use PowerPoint to deaden both the interest in computers and the interest in subject matter. A good teacher can help kids have fun learning with a chalkboard. A bad one can kill a child's interest no matter what wonderful tool you provide.
Having the attention span of a two-year-old after three bowls of chocolate-frosted sugar bombs is what politicians really want from the electorate. War not going too well? Oh, look! Brittany sans undergarments! Socialized medicine a terrible idea? Wow! Look at the snow in the Northeast. Pay no attention to the little man behind the curtain.
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When I saw the tite "Hitachi Does Microsoft" I expected something else.
I saw this in the Hitachi booth at CES. Very col device. The PC screen was projected on the special table top. There is some kind of sensor that detects the hand motions. Just like the Surface and iPhone. They used Google Maps satellite images to demo and showed zooming using multi-touch gestures.
The other part is the extra buttons on the surface that work with a PC based white boarding application. You can click a color and then shape and draw a circle ( or text or square, etc) and it overlays on the PC screen. They said you can save the current window image with the overlays.
Very cool demo. No one discussed pricing.
You're just changing the orientation of the projector. Besides - MS surface has a few other interesting features which I haven't seen in these demos. Off the top of my head, it communicates with devices using bluetooth (I think). This way you can set a camera down on the surface, and see all the stored pictures. or Set you MP3 player down and play music off of it. I could say that Hitachi reinvented the wheel, but if I said that, I'd have to say Microsoft invented the car.
Modded "5 - Interesting"?!?!? Because of the Star Trek reference, probably... Sad, really...
The only "surface without the table" in the world at the moment is this:
http://www.stantum.com/spip.php?article50
It's the first and only multitouch display of its kind, as far as I know. If you know better, do tell me.
"It should be noted that the implication that leaning over the table blocks a projection from above is spurious; the Surface projects an image from below. The 'overhead' setup at CES was a camera designed to show onlookers what was taking place on the table."
Actually, if you look at the video, you can see the projected image being reflected off the _top_ of his hand while it casts a dark shadow on to the table. Clearly projected from above.
So to summarise this is the Microsoft Big Arse Table with out the table? Hmmm, I'm not sure that they've run this past their marketing department.
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Northrup Grumman has had this in Iraq for about four years now.
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Um, I Mr. Johnny Lee is a master hacker. In context, I will humbly mention my own effort in this area, using a simple webcam and projector (no Wiimote). I have a hand-tracking version too, but this video shows a table interface controlled by an LED or candle (light source). http://algomantra.blogspot.com/2007/11/parab0xx-light-controlled-musical.html
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