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Samsung Galaxy Glass Patent Plans To Turn Fingers Into a Keyboard
rjmarvin writes "Samsung looks to have found a way around voice commands for smart glasses by projecting an augmented reality keyboard onto users' hands. Galaxy Glass wearers' thumbs are used as input devices, tapping different areas of their fingers where various keys are virtually mapped. According to the August 2013 patent filing with the WIPO and South Korea's Intellectual Property Office, Samsung states that voice controls are too imprecise a technology, which are too heavily impacted by the noise levels of the surrounding environment."
I find typing on a flat surface doesn't work, as my fingers are curiously all of different lengths.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
I wonder how long before we accept that we will have to wear batteries to power the MRI that reads out brainwaves and turns them into text. It will happen.
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Mommy what is that man doing with his hands?
You must be a clumsy idiot and shouldn't own a phone. I have never broken a phone, and i normally keep them an average of 3 *years* before they are upgraded to new technology.
Tablets, same thing.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
I've seen laser projection keyboards for many years. Can someone with some technical know-how tell me why this isn't prior art?
Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not entirely sure about the universe - Einstein
Gumdrop!
the lengths to which we got to solve absolutely trite "problems". Couldn't these smart people work on actual problems in the world?
Before cell phones people walking around and talking to themselves stood out as probably unstable. But now, not so much.
Will we soon see people walking around, talking to themselves, and fidgeting in the air and think nothing of it?
While they are at it, can they fix the slow-by-design QWERTY keyboard layout and come up with something to make finger key input as fast,efficient and easy to use as possible?
This is the 21st century, we shouldn't be slowed down by the limitations of the mechanical typewriter.
Multiple microphones can be used to triangulate the different sources of incoming noise. Some intelligent filters that take into account the expected 3D position of the speaker can then be used to filter out ambient noise. Cell phones are already doing this - at least the good ones are. This is why the iPhone has multiple microphones. I imagine Samsung is doing something similar. You can learn more and see some impressive examples in the Stanford on-line artificial intelligence lectures. I believe they were posted in iTunes University a couple of years ago. I now use a Linux desktop so I can not verify that they are still available.
The glass didn't break, the cell radio did - Told the carrier ICS update bricked it and got a new one.
How does nobody seem to understand that any good input interface requires tactile feedback? We are truly in the age of form over function. God help us.
Laser keyboards register a keystroke from IR light being reflected back from a fixed location. The AR keyboard will determine keystrokes from visually determining a thumb touching another part of a finger, combined with an adapting visual overlay for only one user, as opposed to an outwardly projected keyboard. That's as best as I can come up with.
I find typing on a flat surface doesn't work, as my fingers are curiously all of different lengths.
Of course your fingers are longer in the middle. How else are you supposed to reach the 3 & 8 keys?
Suborbital [spaceflight] is the special olympics of spaceflight. - Rei
Two things mentioned by others:
- The device is NOT projecting a virtual keyboard with a laser that you can tap with your fingers.
Instead, it lets you use *YOUR* finger as a keyboard and you tap them with your thumbs.
- "Projection" is a poor choice of a word. What the device do, is that it superposes a visual aid on the glasses' HUD to help with the tapping. But you're basically tapping your thumb against your fingers (the glass just puts some labels as augmented reality to help you).
So you see that this patent has absolutely nothing to do with virtual keyboard.
Instead, it's got a much more older prior art:
This way of data input is *VERY* closely related to ancient for of finger-counting in base 12 (probably has been used historically in most culture which count in "dozens") where you count phallanges with your thumb.
According to Wikipedia: apperently this method is still used around in Asia, so no surprise that a korean company is trying to turn it into a data input method.
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
This technology could be useful when you need privacy, like when you just have to talk shit on someone who is in the same room as you, but you can't dictate the message out loud. But for the most part, this seems like a highly inefficient form of input and is probably just a spaghetti-against-the-wall submarine patent in the event that someone else implements the feature and it takes off.
I came up with an idea like this a while back and posted it on Slashdot even. I specifically said this idea is not patentable. Now there is a patent on it.
I think Fin has more potential.
"A person is smart. People are dumb, panicky dangerous animals and you know it." - K
I think this is one of those technologies, like ebooks, or smartphones, that all geeks imagined in their heads growing up (at least, those who grew up before ebooks and virtual reality goggles with keyboards, etc.) - so I'm glad it's finally here! None of the ingredients are revolutionary, it just needs to happen.
I almost never post but love /. as a lurker - amusing and enlightening. As I briefly scanned the article my first impression was a lack of thoughtful finger-thumb character organization to facilitate the most commonly used character strings. The QWERTY layout was created to slow down people who typed very fast because the mechanical devices just couldn't keep up, and now we are wedded to it. The drawing in the article sort of looked like a phone key pad to me, and I wonder how wedded to this configuration we are or will remain - for sure it's not optimum for complex text structures.
I wonder what the key human factors are in consideration here, and if the hand can stand the heavy repetitive moment of this system regardless of the configuration - I'm thinking 1+ hours daily, every day? If one tries out some of the moments in use with the inner most finger pad surfaces and all finger pad surfaces on the little finger, one may experience an awkwardness and strain in of some of these movements; I did and only played with these movements for approx. a minute, often reaching to the more extreme positions that will need to be tapped. When I first began texting years ago, I had none of this awkwardness and potential stress. I was clumsy but that went away with practice, which would occur in this case to some extent, more or less.
To be transparent, I'm an active 70-year old who has a small and thriving consulting company with offices in two major cities. Consequently,I am quite plugged into technology and embrace specific technologies that leverage my intellect so I can deal with being less agile in life now. I'm very interested in things like this.
What do others think?
It's nice when you make up things for a sci-fi short story, and it gets patented a year or two afterwards.
Seen it on one of the forums discussing this technology.......
"No Officer, I was trying to do ctrl-alt-delete."
Now we know how the wizards were controlling their magic warriors in Big Trouble in Little China!
There is no "-1 offended" or "-1 you don't agree with me" mod options for a reason.
try typing on your fingers using your thumb... that's gonna make carpal tunnel syndrome look like a day at the beach!
It reminds me of the attempt to replace mice with gestures: cute thirty seconds, painful in under an hour.