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Microsoft Hardware Demos Pressure-Sensitive Keyboard
Krystalo writes to tell us that Microsoft hardware has an interesting demo of a pressure-sensitive keyboard they have designed. While there are no currently announced plans to turn this into a shipping product, there are many cool uses that one could imagine a device like this providing. "The device will be put to use in the first annual Student Innovation Contest in Victoria, Canada, where contestants will be supplied with a keyboard prototype and challenged with developing new interactions for it. Contestants will demo their creations and attendees will vote for their favorite at the conference on October 5. $2,000 prizes will be given to the authors of programs deemed as the most useful, the best implementation, and the most innovative."
Yeah, I know they meant it distinguishes between a light hit and a hard hit.
They really need a better name.
Perhaps simply calling it "Variable Pressure Keyboard"
Velocity Sensitive is commonly used in the music industry in describing a keyboards that react to pressure. That work for ya?
The parallels with synthesiser keyboard technology are quite interesting. The video in the article talks about using the force the key's hit with to determine whether a key was pressed in error. Soft key hits are likely to be unintentional 'glancing blows'. This is also the classic problem with non-touch sensitive synth keyboards - they suddenly make adept pianists appear to be clumsy morons because every glancing key hit produces a 'wrong note'.
However, in synth terminology, keyboards are distinguished as 'velocity sensitive' (how fast the key is initially hit, like a piano) and 'pressure sensitive' (how hard the key is pressed after the initial strike, like a clavichord pitch-bending a note, sometimes called 'polyphonic aftertouch'). The microsoft keyboard is both velocity and pressure sensitive, with multiple simultaneous channels of pressure sensitivity. The pressure aftertouch has some interesting applications in creative software, where artists have to input several layers or dimensions of data simultaneously. (My field is film post-production so I'm specifically thinking about 3-D). This is currently implemented in most software using a messy combination of simultaneously mouse and modifier keys. But using pressure sensitive keys would accommodate several other simultaneous continuously-variable 'dimensions' of data input.
If "Contests" like this were actually trying to encourage rewarding students for the innovations (as opposed to simply exploiting them), why not give them a slice of the pie, say...5% of the profits generated?
I have YET to see a single "contest" that offered such a reward.
And while I'm on the subject, have you ever noticed that even the losers give up IP rights, so that if the student improves on the idea after the fact, it still belongs to the company sponsoring the "contest", with NO rewards at all? One more aspect that points to the real motives of the sponsors.