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Demo of Laptop/Tabletop Hybrid UI
TheGrapeApe writes "The ACM Symposium on User Interface Software and Technology (ACMUIST) has an interesting proof-of-concept video up demonstrating the use of cameras and laser pico-projectors to 'extend' a laptop's user interface to adjacent surfaces. The video demonstrates some simple gestures like tapping and dragging being captured on the 'extended' surface. While the prototype appears to be somewhat cumbersome, it's easy to see how it might be more elegantly integrated into the hardware with more R&D."
...and looking for POV on XXNX.com
It is dangerous to be right when the government is wrong.
The one downside is the system causes you to do an over-exaggerated nod any time you use it.
Who has a desk as clean as that?
That was the worst video demo I've seen in recent memory. None of the purported applications were interesting at all.
Quick, you want to pause the music you're playing. Which would be easier? (1) Hitting a pause button on your laptop; (2) Hitting a pause button on your headphones; (3) Putting an accelerometer in your headphones; (4) Finding the exact tiny square on your desk such that if you put your headphones down there and maybe fiddle with it for a couple seconds so it's in the proper orientation to be picked up by a camera? I don't see much future in option #4.
The scanning was pretty bad, too. Even manually taking a picture of a photo or piece of paper, where I'm directly overhead and fiddling with the lighting, it's hard to get a good result. When that started I thought "wow that picture is going to look like absolute shit" and it turned out even worse than I thought. Even at 480p you could the picture was unusable for anything, virtually unrecognizable even.
The worst was the "tapping", though. It actually requires you to break your own finger bones just to register a "tap"?
This sort of thing was being done even back in 1985, and there are videos to demonstrating it:
My interest is in finding prior art to prevent any company from using patents to jam up phone development for the years to come. If anyone else has examples from 1990 or before, please let me know.
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"This feature is knock-on-wood and free of glitches." *knocks on wood desk* "Well, except when the computer closes all open programs like it just did. We still need to work on that particular gesture."
I can't see the video due to Websense at work blocking Youtube (grrrrr), but from what the description describes, isn't this system similar to what Tony Stark had in the Iron Man movie? The holographic desktop projections were pretty cool for that movie. He would just grab a portion of the armor and throw it in the virtual trashcan.
You're messin' with my Zen Thing, man.....
That was the worst video demo I've seen in recent memory. None of the purported applications were interesting at all.
This was a bunch of students working on a sponsored project and presenting a video of their finished experiment to judges at a conference. The video was probably not even a primary concern, since judges would probably be seeing a live demo. You're living far too pampered a life if you think every product presentation is made with you and your personal needs in mind. Your reaction is an example of corporations ballooning people's sense of entitlement and self-importance to extravagant proportions.
The idea behind experiments like this one is not to immediately produce a salable item or any direct profit, but rather to encourage an environment where new kinds of thinking can emerge which might otherwise not, and thus present us with possibilities not envisioned prior. Another word for this is, "Play".
I strongly recommend you look into it.
-FL
Dude, it's a POC! It only needs to be good enough to see the possibilities. Besides, it was done by engineers at a University. Were you expecting a "Steve Jobs" amazing world changing demo?
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