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CMU Researchers Create Multitouch Surface Anywhere
tekgoblin writes "In a joint effort between Microsoft and the Carnegie Mellon Human Computer Interaction Institute, a new interface has been born. The new interface is usable on any surface, including notebooks, tables, walls and body parts. The UI is completely multitouch and worn on the shoulder, which will turn any surface you are pointing at into a usable workspace by the combination of a projector and a 3D modeling device similar to the Kinect."
Looks bulky!
I'm pretty sure I saw this absolutely ages ago. It was an open source project so you could do it yourself and it was just a projector and a camera on a thing around your neck. The video had them playing a racing game on a piece of paper, they turned the car by tilting the paper. In fact, I'm going to find an article. http://www.wired.com/epicenter/2009/02/ted-digital-six/ There, already done by MIT.
After all those GPS-tagging and 2D barcodes there finally is an AR idea that's actually useful. If they could design this into a convenient headgear that would be awesome.
Now we just have to wait for Apple to patent the concept of using this on a rectangular surface with rounded edges.
And in courts, whoever owns this technological patent would probably lose, while whoever patented a design that uses this invention would win.
I am getting lost.
Ahh, so the Predator was just looking for a good surface to use for multitouch all along. Poor misunderstood Predator.
I'm gonna turn every person i meet into a live3d interactive porn display surface!
Only viewable with the goggles... That finally do something.
The preformance of the Triple-core 64-bit PowerPC has allow microsof to do serious computations.
I can see this having many cool applications (if only because it has a very good built in camera system, and a projector).
But I cannot see myself on a train, working for an hour literally on the back of my hand. I would probably still want a flat, white, sturdy surface to work on.
And... isn't a keyboard + mouse a million times cheaper than a projector + motion detection?
Here for the "any surface you are pointing at" comments.
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
How long till Apple comes running and sues them? I mean Apple invented multi-touch after all; and shoulders of course.
if you project onto a black rectangle with rounded edges.
Microsoft's page about this project also discusses "Pocket Touch", a capacitive touch panel's that's designed to work through clothing. The idea is that you could have a touch panel on the back of your phone (or whatever) that could respond to gestures while it's still in your pocket.
No kidding!!! What do you say at this point?
You'd want to use it when you're out & about, not always indoors. Those projections will be washed away in direct sunlight. 'Wearable' yes, but indoors-only.
Not pet friendly - I can see my cat going blind when I walk around with the projector shining down.
Also does the wearer have to lug an XBOX and power supply along in a backpack?
Any others you can think of?
This already exists, and it is called Sixth Sense. The inventor is Pranav Mistry. Take a look at his TED talk:
http://www.ted.com/talks/pranav_mistry_the_thrilling_potential_of_sixthsense_technology.html
I would love to see a wrap around work surface, that rolls up at the back and is translucent. A series of projectors below, project images onto the bottom of the work space. A camera above watches your hands. On the great big beautiful work surface, everything is multi-touch sensitive. Everything is accessible and can be managed by a wide selection of interactive models (everything from 3D mind-maps to a typical business desktop, and a hundred other working interfaces.) In fact depending on the task at hand, you can choose completely different working surfaces. Editing a movie, composing music, painting, writing the great American novel or 3D modeling whatever you want, the environment can be configured to fully support that task or activity. You can have your favorite surfaces saved and easily accessible. Combine this with a Seri-like speech cognition engine. Make the surface acoustically transparent and place a small array of speakers behind the projectors so an apparent sound image can move around with whatever is being projected.
Such a system would transform creativity. Literally unleash invention. When the machine becomes a simple tool, that you can talk to, and that reflects what you can you can dream of by simply moving your hands and fingers. Imagine what you could create with such a machine? The mind boggles.
Yes, I want to trade in my 2000 dpi mouse for my clunky index finger that probably shakes more than the entire traverse of my mouse every time my heart beats. Please.
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
...just because you don't like the company, right?
When it's a joint effort between MS and CMU, only CMU deserves the headline? CMU/MS, there, three more characters.
Slashdot, your bias is showing~
I don't understand why you have to use a sensor for gesture recognition to re-invent the touch screen (I suggest this link where you can find a lot of opensource applications http://arena.openni.org/). Maybe it is time to re-think the concept of human-computer interaction considering the idea of using gesture to control an electronic device.
I thought a multi-touch device sitting on your shoulder would be called Polly-Touch!
Set your phasers on "funky"!
http://www.pranavmistry.com/projects/sixthsense/
'SixthSense' is a wearable gestural interface that augments the physical world around us with digital information and lets us use natural hand gestures to interact with that information.
There was also a TED talk about it. If you haven't seen it yet, you should, it is very inspiring and futuristic.
So yeah, another slow news day?
The real question remains- can it be used for porn? Bam. Millions of sales... and the world grows slightly sadder.
I write professional videogame reviews! http://www.digitallydownloaded.net/
The application to body parts raises sensitive questions.
Gently reply
Pranav Mistry at MIT Media Lab demonstrated something similar at a TED talk in 2009. His was slung about the neck. He and his advisor, Pattie Maes, called it Sixth Sense.
Mod that parent up, the video (and related) he links is incredible.
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
I'll probably get immediately modded down but this is the sort of thing that Apple (Steve Jobs) could've taken and cleaned up to make into something not just usable but something people WANT to use.
Unfortunately, in the hands of Microsoft it'll languish and maybe come out as some minor curiosity like Microsoft Surface.
So sad.
Anyway, it'd be nice if, as the hardware evolves, they could put the camera and projector in a users glasses. Not only would it make it less dorky but there would be much less shadowing since the light source could be very close to the light sensors (the camera and the users eyes!). As for the electronics, perhaps the projector (and camera) could be a simple optics assembly connected to the guts (laser/LED, CMOS, storage, power) on the users belt like an iPod (remember those?). Maybe instead of those ubiquitous white earbuds we would have white "eye buds" to clip onto glasses.
Hmmm... Can I patent that?
I'll wait till the version with 3 dots and the little missiles comes out.
It looks like you have to stick them in you ass, check the photos!!!
... for those who like to touch themselves!
The UI is completely multitouch and worn on the shoulder, which will turn any surface you are pointing at into a usable workspace by the combination of a projector and a 3D modeling device similar to the Kinect.
Please let me set the default cursor to three little red dots.
All well and good, but just don't try pointing at any surface that might happen to be black with rounded corners.
Phillip.
Property for sale in Nice, France
too bad they don't own patents on what will likely become common gestures.
for my masters, but sadly without the advantages of having access to a custom PrimeSense camera (I had initially looked at the kinect but the 50cm minimum range makes things rather awkward). Lordy, I'm almost embarrassed at how primitive what I'm working on is in comparison to this piece of work (in my defence though, part-time, unfunded student, and its a HCI rather than comp-sci oriented masters).
This is fantastic stuff since THE primary problem I'm seeing in creating any usable interaction from Wearable Gestural Interfaces such as this is in getting accurate and reliable computer vision techniques working to detect finger/hand positioning. Time of flight cameras solve this of course and shoulder mounting, although it looks strange, is actually a very good use of the body for placement since its an area that is seldom obstructed and relatively safe from being knocked when moving around. Personally, where I see this evolving is so that devices such as these end up being similar to large closed-cup headphones that you wear around your neck - does saying that make the concept prior art? *grin*
So I guess I'd better ensure this one makes it into my lit review...luckily I'm looking at something slightly different since my focus is primarily on the use of in air gestures for command and control and the projector is really secondary....but damn it would have been nice to have access to some of the underlying depth sensing tech.
Oh http://os6sense.blogspot.com/ if anyone is interested
a little lens, maybe mounted over one of my eyes. And if that lens also shot red laser beams well then I think we'd have a product.
It was a virtual keyboard on any surface implemented by lasers. This could be readily generalized to multi-touch I presume.
This opens the possibility of much smaller mobile computing devices if you dont need a physical screen, but just a laser port or two. That could fit in a ring, watch, keychain, etc.
I see a great future for this technology in the porn industry and in strip clubs.
We are the 198 proof..
'natural' hand gestures are culture based and can still vary by person. There is no UI to rule them all.
Pretty polly, pretty polly. Why is that man wearing a Parrot on his shoulder?!