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Creating a "Force Field" Invisible Touch Interface
angry tapir writes "Using infrared sensors like the ones on television remote controls, Texas A&M University students presented an inexpensive multitouch system at the Computer Human Interaction (CHI) conference in Vancouver. 'I like to consider it an optical force field; it's like a picture frame where we shoot thousands of light beams across and we can detect anything that intersects that frame,' said Jonathan Moeller, a research assistant in the Interface Ecology Lab at Texas A&M University. The frame is lined with 256 IR sensors, which are connected to a computer. When ZeroTouch is mounted over a traditional computer screen it turns the display into a multitouch surface. Taken one step further, if the screen is suspended then a user could paint a virtual canvas."
The question is, will it drive down the price of devices with multitouch capability?
More specifically, could we see this being applied in a competitor to Microsoft Surface anytime soon?
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
I swear we used to have these at work, 10-15 years ago. They were not multi-touch, but that was likely due to the computer interface (serial) and the perhaps more primitive technology at the time. But I'm pretty sure the sensors were infra-red. As I recall, it wasn't necessarily the most accurate system. So, these guys just improved it a bit, or is this truly "revolutionary"?
Everything you know is wrong, Just forget the words and sing along.
Don't hold back... tell us how you really feel.
Seriously... what is your problem with this? If you read the article and watched the video, you'd likely see that the applications for this are enormous.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
Bear in mind that something doesn't have to always utilize cutting edge technology to find a new market.
Consider also that factors may have been present that caused the technology to not live up to any major expectations in the 80's which may not be applicable today.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
I'm not a huge fan of personal attacks, but you've got to admit, the guy's right.. this stuff is really very old stuff... it's not even marginally innovative.
It's not that it's old... it's that its' NOT new in any tangible way... no new tech , no new application, no real invention here.. which makes it pretty "meh" in perspective.
That this stuff has been sold commercially for decades is pretty damning in terms of this being a "So what? " news item.
how is this a FORCE field?
Main feature of the HP-150.
Can we get a "-1 Wrong" moderation option?
Disclaimer: I'm the guy in the video.
The big difference between what we're doing, and what's been done before, is that we are using one-to-many communication between emitters and sensors, as opposed to earlier systems, which use matched emitter/sensor pairs on opposite sides of the display to generate a series of parallel lines in both the x and y directions that can be interrupted.
By reading from a large number of sensors for each infrared emitter, we generate a dense mesh of infrared light beams, which is what enables the sensor to detect multiple touches. Prior infrared systems using parallel beams suffer from ghost touch ambiguities when multiple fingers are on the display. Ours does not. This is the big differentiator between what's been done before and what we've done.
Most SMART boards and other commercial multi-touch sensors, use two cameras in the corners of a screen (some use four), and computer vision algorithms to identify and track touches on the display. Our approach is different in that it generates a more complete visual hull of the interactive area than with these types of systems. Using two cameras means you can only reliably track two touches due to occlusion issues, whereas we can detect 20+ touchpoints with high reliability.
More info can be found on our website: http://ecologylab.net/zerotouch/
The publications at the bottom of the page should help slashdot readers understand the technical innovations a little bit better.
You mean they've re-invented the Theremin?
I thought shields had to be dropped for phasers?