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Microsoft Hardware Demos Pressure-Sensitive Keyboard

Posted by ScuttleMonkey on from the wtb-vi-plugin-for-this-device dept.

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."

41 of 212 comments (clear)

  1. Another stroke of genious from MS by Froze · · Score: 2, Funny

    A keyboard that can actually detect when someone presses on a key! Will wonders never cease.

    --
    -- The morphemes of your disquisition are ascertainable, but they have eschewed an ambit of transpicuous exposition.
    1. Re:Another stroke of genious from MS by NotQuiteReal · · Score: 4, Funny

      No, it is PRESSURE SENSITIVE. It will upcase letters when you press THEM HARD.

      --
      This issue is a bit more complicated than you think.
    2. Re:Another stroke of genious from MS by Tim4444 · · Score: 5, Funny

      aha! finally a keyboard that can make everything uppercase when i'm shouting at you!! i mean SHOUTING AT YOU!!!!

    3. Re:Another stroke of genious from MS by Bobfrankly1 · · Score: 3, Insightful

      A keyboard that can actually detect when someone presses on a key! Will wonders never cease.

      We're still waiting for the comment that can actually detect when it shouldn't be posted, as evidenced by the parent...

    4. Re:Another stroke of genious from MS by Anachragnome · · Score: 3, Funny

      Parent was the fastest "+4 Funny" to "-0 Troll" to "fucking gone" post moderation I've ever seen on /.

      What a waste of mod points.

    5. Re:Another stroke of genious from MS by infolation · · Score: 4, Informative

      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.

    6. Re:Another stroke of genious from MS by jpmorgan · · Score: 2, Insightful

      That's actually a pretty cool idea. You've just eliminated the shift and capslock keys. You could probably eliminate other function keys too with other clever combinations + pressures. That would be fantastic for a tiny netbook.

    7. Re:Another stroke of genious from MS by digitalunity · · Score: 2, Interesting

      I can imagine a large variety of useful ways to use pressure sensitive keys in gaming and media editing. Specifically, with applying paint tools in GIMP or Photoshop.

      --
      You can't legislate goodness. Let each to his own destiny, by will of his freely made choices.
    8. Re:Another stroke of genious from MS by fuzzyfuzzyfungus · · Score: 2, Informative

      You'd really need a fairly broadly adopted standard for that to work out. Chorded keyboards are crazy powerful, especially per unit area/number of keys; but they find only the most specialist applications and users because they have a nontrivial learning curve, and are quite obscure.

      Unless you wanted to confine yourself to only the most trivial of substitutions, you'd need broad adoption to motivate people to put in the effort of learning the new system. Even systems that merely involve software remapping of normal keyboards have had a hard life. Nobody who isn't a court reporter or something would bother to put in the time to learn a system that would tie them to a particular obscure hardware brand.

      I'd like to see it, more expressive and powerful input devices are always a good thing; but the history doesn't leave me hopeful. The world is, and has been for a while, full of extremely powerful input systems for specialist users, court reporters, stenographers, musicians, etc. With the exception of the basic piano-style keyboard, those powerful, but initially opaque, interfaces have remained niche and expensive compared to your basic, boring 144 key keyboard, T9 for cellphones, and some fairly simple touchscreen stuff.

    9. Re:Another stroke of genious from MS by Razalhague · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Then all we need is a pressure sensitive mouse. Or do they already exist? I'm not talking about tablets, a simple mouse with pressure sensitive buttons would be a lot cheaper than any tablet of reasonable size.

    10. Re:Another stroke of genious from MS by marciot · · Score: 4, Funny

      I nEEd to leArN to TyPE wiTH moRe coNSistENT preSsurE.

    11. Re:Another stroke of genious from MS by youn · · Score: 2, Funny

      Of course, it's sensitive to pressure... it gets pressured when you push its buttons... and then it starts shouting :)

      --
      Never antropomorphize computers, they do not like that :p
  2. Just use it like a game controller. by ausekilis · · Score: 3, Funny

    light pressure for lower case 'a', harder pressure for upper case 'A', and abrupt spikes in pressure for expletives "#$@^%^!".

    1. Re:Just use it like a game controller. by Capt.DrumkenBum · · Score: 4, Insightful

      I can think of one use right off.
      If person typing an email is hitting keys harder than normal. Delay sending the message for a few hours, as they are probably angry and might wish they had not sent the message.

      --
      If I were God, wouldn't I protect my churches from acts of me?
  3. Dammed! by OrangeMonkey11 · · Score: 4, Funny

    Now keyboards can report abuse when I beat the shit out of it when I get pissed off

    1. Re:Dammed! by steelfood · · Score: 4, Funny

      Apple has a patent on that.

      --
      "If a nation expects to be ignorant and free in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be."
  4. What could go wrong by basementman · · Score: 2, Funny

    Rubber dome keys, keys do different things based on different pressures, extra useless features, won't be hard to type on at all.

    --
    A Magic the Gathering Article and Forum Aggregator
    1. Re:What could go wrong by dr_wheel · · Score: 5, Funny

      Rubber dome keys, keys do different things based on different pressures, extra useless features, won't be hard to type on at all.

      i"M nOT sUrE WHat yoU'Re tRyInG tO sAY> CoulD yOu BE MOre SPecIFiC?

  5. Gamer keyboard! by BigDXLT · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Yes, yes and more yes. The one thing I've always wanted in a keyboard. No more walk/run modifier key or jerky steering in driving/flying games. Yay!

    1. Re:Gamer keyboard! by CheddarHead · · Score: 2, Insightful

      I agree that for a game that is purely driving or flying that joysticks or wheels would be better. However, there are many games (FPSs for example) that incorporate driving or flying as some small part of the game, but the bulk of the game is better controlled with a mouse and keyboard. This could potentially improve those driving/flying games sequences.

    2. Re:Gamer keyboard! by gnupun · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Also awesome for any text editing... you can now control the scroll speed when using up/down arrow keys.

  6. Come on... by Bobfrankly1 · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Can't believe no one has made a musical keyboard comment yet...On the other hand, it seems we just keep getting closer and closer to LCARS.

  7. Ummm... by Anachragnome · · Score: 5, Insightful

    How about the students sit on their ideas and market them when the keyboard comes out?

    Should be worth more then a lousy $2000, especially considering the fact that the students will have NO intellectual property rights once they submit through the contest.

    Just another way for MS to steal ideas, patent them and then pocket all the profits.

    On another note, I wonder what MS employees think about their employer opting to go outside the company for ideas rather then feed their employees families.

    1. Re:Ummm... by Anachragnome · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Right.

      You're probably correct. Their employees more then likely already realize MS will patent the ideas REGARDLESS, and steal them anyways, so whats the difference, right?

    2. Re:Ummm... by Anachragnome · · Score: 5, Informative

      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.

  8. Clippy by Nos. · · Score: 2, Funny

    Great, I can see it now. I sit down to type some angry letter to someone and Clippy is going to pop up:

    "You seem to be pressing the keys very hard, are you upset?"

    Its going to be the next Eliza.

  9. Re:emacs lovers' dream by LiquidCoooled · · Score: 2, Funny

    for the love of god, please add code to close it when I bash the keyboard repeatedly.

    I have mistakenly thought this functionality already existed.

    --
    liqbase :: faster than paper
  10. Aren't all keyboards pressure sensitive by gurps_npc · · Score: 4, Insightful
    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"

    --
    excitingthingstodo.blogspot.com
    1. Re:Aren't all keyboards pressure sensitive by Bobfrankly1 · · Score: 3, Informative

      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?

    2. Re:Aren't all keyboards pressure sensitive by Chirs · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Amazingly enough, "velocity sensitive" keyboards respond to velocity, not pressure.

    3. Re:Aren't all keyboards pressure sensitive by RealGrouchy · · Score: 4, Funny

      Amazingly enough, "velocity sensitive" keyboards respond to velocity, not pressure.

      I don't care if the keyboard knows whether I'm bashing it or I'm throwing it across the room, so long as it knows I'm pissed off at it!

      - RG>

      --
      Hey pal, this isn't a pleasantforest, so don't waste my time with pleasantries!
    4. Re:Aren't all keyboards pressure sensitive by 93+Escort+Wagon · · Score: 2, Informative

      Velocity Sensitive is commonly used in the music industry in describing a keyboards that react to pressure. That work for ya?

      It'd take a bit more work to implement this; but I bet there'd be a small market (centered around Redmond, WA) for Velocity Sensitive Chairs.

      --
      #DeleteChrome
    5. Re:Aren't all keyboards pressure sensitive by Khashishi · · Score: 2, Informative

      No, velocity sensitivity doesn't react to pressure, but how fast you strike the key. The term you are looking for is aftertouch.

  11. Re:emacs lovers' dream by eln · · Score: 4, Funny

    No, they would just add more features to emacs to take advantage of it.

    "(light press)Meta-(hard press)Ctrl-(medium press)Shift-(hard press)C" automatically spell and grammar checks your document while giving you a light foot massage, but "(hard press)Meta-(medium press)Ctrl-(light press)Shift-(medium press)C" launches the missiles. That sort of thing.

  12. Re:What's the point? by Chyeld · · Score: 3, Funny

    Quickstart guide included with your new Microsoft Natural Pressure Sensitive Bob Keyboard:

    • Press escape to pull up the game menu and access the settings.
    • Pound escape to rage quit.
    • Throw the keyboard across the room to rage quit while spamming "HACKING ASSHOLES!" into chat

    • ...

  13. Pleasure Sensitive by Tom9729 · · Score: 2, Funny

    I honestly read the summary title as "Microsoft Hardware Demos Pleasure Sensitive Keyboard".

    Needless to say I was very disturbed...

    1. Re:Pleasure Sensitive by ink · · Score: 5, Funny

      Wouldn't that be a legitimate use of the keyboard? Would Microsoft pay $2000 for it?

      gentle.. gentle.. gentle..

      asdf... mmmm....

      Harder! Firmer!

      THERE!

      HARDER! NOW! THE TILDE! THE TILDE! CARROT! YES!

      --
      The wheel is turning, but the hamster is dead.
  14. 1-key keyboard? by Ichijo · · Score: 4, Funny

    As you can see, the keyboard has pressure-sensitive keys, meaning each key is capable of recording pressure force, up to an 8-bit resolution.

    Excellent! Keyboards from now on will need only 1 key!

    --
    Any sufficiently unpopular but cohesive argument is indistinguishable from trolling.
  15. Re:What's the point? by Vectronic · · Score: 3, Insightful

    because it turns your 104 into 208 or 312, there's the obvious "angry typing" usage, but there is also potential for stuff like...
    Alt+Tab (light) = Change Tab In Browser
    Alt+Tab (med) = Change Application Window
    Alt+Tab (hard) = Change User Account

    or

    Left (light) = Move (one char)
    Left (med) = Move (one word)
    Left (hard) = Move (one line)

    or the F# keys, you could now have 24 instead of 12.

    (granted I basically just look at the pictures, didn't RTFA) but depending on how this is done, it could also mean 2 or 3x the failure rate, however, it could also mean half or a third of the failures for normal key typing, your Space Bar gives out on a normal keyboard, it's done, but with this one you could just press harder/lighter and it would still work.

  16. Ok, where's the mouse? by pspahn · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Why can't we just have a pressure sensitive mouse? Graphics tablets aren't for everyone, mmkay?

    --
    Someone flopped a steamer in the gene pool.
  17. Re:Gamer^WEmacs keyboard! by tlhIngan · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Yes, yes and more yes. The one thing I've always wanted in a keyboard. No more walk/run modifier key or jerky steering in driving/flying games. Yay!

    No, it'll be perfect for Emacs users. Now they can add "light press", "medium press", "hard press", "whacked key" to the list of available modifiers! Think of how much more productive they can be now that they increased the number of modifiers available. Now every function will be able to be mapped to a keystroke or a set of them. E.g., whack Q 5 times to quit.

    Has anyone mentioned that entering music via the keyboard is also an option now? (I kid, I kid...)