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Contest Winners Show Potential For Pressure-Sensitive Keyboard
Chris Harrison writes "About a month ago, Microsoft sent out prototype pressure sensitive keyboards to 40 international teams. They had four weeks to hack and cobble together some cool ideas. The innovation contest that centered around the keyboards released the winners last night (after a voting period Monday night at the ACM UIST conference). Some pretty neat ideas, ranging from pressure-sensitive password entry (Safelock), magnetic pens for cursor control (Hidden Forces), and even cool climbing (Rock Climbing) and land-deformation games (BallMeR)."
Every keyboard I've ever used did something when I pressed on it. Except the broken ones.
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
What if something happens to the legitimate user's hand? Injury, for instance. Or, even simpler - typing with one hand because of holding a coffee mug in another.
Did you know that "FTW" ("for the win") is a direct translation of "Sieg Heil"?
A land deformation game named BallMer? I see we've moved from chair-throwing straight to the fat jokes.
Finally a keyboard that recognizes when I slam my fist into it! Make that a keybinding for "stop whatever the fuck you're doing and respond already".
I like this, and see pressure sensitive keyboards being predominant in the not too distant future, based primarily upon the supplemental embedded video at the bottom of the linked page. All of the proposed uses, from deleting word at a time, to recognising typos, to movement in games, I can't see any argument against. Its just a genuinely innovative device. A lot of the competition entries are rather useless as they stand, but go a long way to show the potential of the platform. One problem I've always had with PC gaming is not being able to play driving games properly without a controller, as on/off left/right is useless. I suppose this would solve that problem, as I'd now have an analogue keyboard. As to the typing/password recognition, of course it would have teething problems en route to full user acceptance, but all of the criticism levelled so far is easily surmountable. Someone loses a hand, or their typing changes - easy! As per online banking and whatnot, the user can answer a few predefined questions (independent of typing style) and reset the memory. A brute force attack could be prevented by limiting the number of attempts. Okay, so a couple of problems would always be present, such as typing with a coffee in hand or logging in to your girlfriends facebook, but overall I am thrilled by the idea, enough to make my second /. post ever, and am very much looking forward to owning one, providing they don't come with optimus maximus pricetags.
They should have called the rock climbing game Ballmer Peak.
Squirrel!
The first application mentioned, the one that assigns user-specific keys/passwords based on typing habits seems like a very impressive and inventive new method of security. Nonetheless, my primary concern would be that it would lock people out of their computers/applications when they have had a little much to drink. On the bright side, I suppose it could cut down on some of the poorer quality Youtube comments and twitter posts...then again, maybe not...
Motorcycles, Robots, Space Gossip and More!
I like the idea, but if they remove the *click* physical feedback, someone's going to die.
Remember a decade or two ago when ergonomic keyboards were going to save our lives and bring about world peace? That really panned out, didn't it?
Or remember before that when the Dvorak layout was being pushed as a better way to type? Clearly since we don't need to worry about typewriter hammers anymore we are ready to move away from QWERTY, right?
Some of us may recall a laptop manufacturer who claimed to have invented a keyboard that could use the kinetic energy of typing to help charge the battery - anyone have one?
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
Not to piss on their parade, but none of those ideas seem like anything that will ever in one way or another be used by anyone. Even the password thing. Why? Because although it seems like a good idea, people like to think of computers as simple dumb machines. And they need to stay this way, so we can predict how they will respond to our actions. No one's going to want to be locked out of their account because their computer doesn't like the way they're typing today (maybe they hurt their left wrist, or maybe they'd rather copy-paste their password in).
That's pretty typical of the "behold the technology of tomorrow!"-type of concept that never happens cause no one actually wants it, like voice recognition-everything, videophones, video mail or typing e-mails from your living room on your TV set. The problem is that all that's come out of this contest destined to proving the potential of this new keyboard thingie isn't the solution to any problem, or any sort of desirable improvement on anything, which seems to invalidate the merits of the keyboard technology in question. In other words, so what's this thing good for?
You just got troll'd!
woah.You're right. this could be awesome for lots of music editing and synthesizing work.
I've decided to Diversify my Holdings. I've divided my cash between my left and right pockets, instead of all in one.
Ah, so the future of pressure sensitive keyboards is gimmicks. Good to know.
I can't wait till I see a password policy that says "Please remember passwords are case sensitive, and must be accurate to .02 newtons per key"
Defective Logic
I'm surprised none of the proposals include use as a musical controller. Maybe because its not a velocity detector, but pressure sensitivity under each key? Man this is kind of a stupid idea. Typical M$. Seems like people run the company with a logitech remote. It seems obvious to me that after the initial key depression, knowing the speed during depression is more useful than the pressure after contact. I mean in interfacing this is like a dual function trigger. A single trigger that can produce 2 events, or an event with an associated property time stamp on the first.
Don't get me wrong, people would use this musically for vibrato, or doing queer techno tricks with filters. But for tapping out beats and even for a virtual golf game, the velocity would be better to have than a finger staying on a key and pressing harder....is M$ really that stupid? Unless you can get velocity from a short bit of pressure at the beginning. Velocity pads have been around for so long. Pressure detectors must be more expensive to make useful. All you need for velocity is an extra contact - 2 per key, with one elevated. Time between contacts, curve to velocity. On a musical keyboard velocity is used 90% of the time, with pressure used maybe 5%, and fixed no sensitivity of anything about 5%.
The most obvious ap for a pressure sensitive keyboard is for music and MIDI input. Because the standard PC/PS2 keyboard encodes both key-press and key-release as separate events (distinct scan-code sequences sent from the kbd to the PC), the PS2 makes a good *CHEAP* MIDI tone module input device.
Each key is mapped to a MIDI note or a MIDI parameter. Key press sounds the note and key release turns the note off. Any $1 microcontroller can be programmed to act as an interface. It's not a 'real' piano-type keyboard, but it doesn't cost $120 either.
The major disadvantages of using a PS2 keyboard as a MIDI input are three:
- Not every combination of keypresses produces corresponding polyphonic chords. Every manufacturers PS2 keyboard has 'dead' combinations of keys due to the internal row/column matrix.
- The keys are too small and are not linear. Nevertheless, accordion players learn to get around this problem.
- There is no MIDI velocity. There is no way to affect the sound's volume or tonality by varying how hard the PS2 keys are pressed. MIDI piano keyboards measure the time between a key's leaving the top position and its reaching the bottom of its movement. This becomes the Note Velocity value and is a programmable parameter of the note's sound, usually volume.
A pressure-sensitive keyboard would solve problems 1 and 3 above. It would be most welcome in the DIY MIDI community, IF it were both CHEAP and easy-to-program. By cheap, I mean less than $20 US and easy-to-program means that additional pressure parameter follow the same hardware quasi-SPI electronic waveforms as the current PS2 format and not be dependent on internal Windows APIs for its implementation. And, I almost forgot, the new keyboard must be absolutely low-powered. If it consumed more than 2-3 milliamps, then it would be worthless. Current HPs and Dell PS2 keyboards consume between 1 and 2 milliamps at +5 volts, while the 1995-2000 era Microsoft split-keyboard actually consumed about 80 milliamps or more. Which made them worthless for battery-powered off-PC applications.
If a pressure-sensitive keyboard isn't both cheap, low-powered, and easy-to-program, then it is just another stupid useless expensive toy keyboard destined to be stacked up in the back of Weird Stuff Warehouse six months after its grand release.