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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."
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.
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 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?
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.
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?
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