Scientists Discover Way to Make Anything a Touchscreen
The idea of a portable, impressively useful touchscreen interface has very quickly gone from the world of science fiction to depictions of dubious accuracy on mainstream shows like NCIS or CSI. The consumer, alas, has had to make due with smaller touchscreen interfaces on our phones and tablets and giant, spy-catching rigs aren't coming to us anytime soon, but if scientists at the Carnegie Mellon Human Computer Interaction Institute have anything to say about it, we might soon get the next best thing. In a joint project with Microsoft, they've created a unique technology that allows a functional multi-touch screen to be displayed on almost any surface, including the body.
The product, blessed with the incredible name 'Omnitouch' uses a picoprojector and a short range depth camera for taking 3D images (similar to a Microsoft Kinect) to project images with full multi-touch functionality onto whatever surface the user desires. The system is worn on the shoulder, and because it requires no 'calibration, training or instrumentation of the environment' beyond that equipment, it should be accessible nearly anywhere. Of course even that kind of portability is pretty bulky, but as Omnitouch is at the moment more proof of concept than anything else, it's likely to get a whole lot smaller by the time a consumer version is rolled out. We'll be holding out for a version mounted inside one's glasses.
A couple of videos explaining how Omnitouch works in greater detail have been posted to YouTube. Here is a general overview, good for less tech-minded people interested in living in a Star Trek world faster than we thought possible:
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shoulder-mounted pc's are the future. i bet apple or better yet rambus has the patent rights already...
Nice but still clumsy. I want the UI rendered directly on the retina so only I can see it.
As a prototype, it looks very interesting. Looking forward to this becoming a part of our future!
Two comments:
- This is an old concept, I've seen similar ideas years ago
- Can it turn AIR into a touchschreen?
Cool, look forward to a terminal interface as used in the original Tron.
END OF LINE....
Can it play crysis??
Great. Now everyone is going to be walking around looking like the Predator, poking themselves.
LOL at the above comment :-)
This looks strikingly similar to what Apple filed a patent for a while back, though not exact. Their patent included the ability to share multiple iDevices, so that makes it unique, but the underlying concept was EXACTLY as indicated in this article. The iDevices project onto a surface, and cameras track user input to provide touch functionality on the projected screen.
Poor choice of a name -- Omnitouch is already a product from Home Automation Inc., been out for years You'd think the geniuses at Carnegie Mellon would have taken a moment to at least Google the name.
This proves evolution wrong!!!!
(Sorry, but a troll is needed in every Discussion board)
Needs a bit of spit and polish, but it looks like they have already made it quite useful. Bravo! very cool!
I think this is fine...if you can conceal it in a Parrot figure...then nobody would know you're walking around with a shoulder mounted camera.
.Agathorn. What are you talking about. Quit making things up. What a tool.
Nice but still clumsy. I want the UI rendered directly on the retina so only I can see it.
Great...So you end up constantly poking yourself in the eye?
omn iTouch - darn. apple is gonna sue those scientists and microsoft.
nice tech, combine that with microsoft's kinect on the next xbox. new ways to play with yourself!
It could be great in the medicine, one day.
Why are we not hearing of this in the mainstream media? We are still being bombarded with iPhone propaganda. Sad situation that something as revolutionary as this should go almost completely unreported by the msm. Thanks for this glimpse into the future for technology...
I suspect the '3d camera' is actually the Kinect internals repackaged/relensed for shorter ranges (the Kinect is a very cheap device for the capabilities it's got). Cool idea matching it up to a projector.
Great. Now everyone is going to be walking around looking like the Predator, poking themselves.
So you are saying nothing will change?
Two comments:- This is an old concept, I've seen similar ideas years ago- Can it turn AIR into a touchschreen?
Japanese did it already:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3seTlvQtIgc
This has huge possibilities for people who present things on a regular basis, especially to smaller groups (architects, designers, and doctors to name a couple of professions) where the interaction is part of the presentation.
I can see the pr0n industry embracing this.
Why are we not hearing of this in the mainstream media? We are still being bombarded with iPhone propaganda. Sad situation that something as revolutionary as this should go almost completely unreported by the msm. Thanks for this glimpse into the future for technology...
The 'media' (from Fox all the way to MSNBC) is not interested in bringing news, they are interested in ratings and money. They will only ever give the news that is either already known to people and rehash things that people like to hear about, or they will bring something shocking/horrifying/scary to keep you glued. Journalism (at least in the American pop media) is dead!
This tech was unveiled in 2009
http://www.ted.com/talks/pranav_mi [...] ology.html
If it mounted on the shoulder or anywhere else on a body, then even the slightest movement will be magnified on the object used as a screen.
Seems kinda like an impractical version of augmented reality glasses. Even if they can shrink down the projector/camera size, there's still the issue of batterys, which haven't shown much progress in the way of shrinking.
Projecting an image onto glasses won't be nearly as power hungry as a full-on projector.
Instead of being a personal device, shoulder-mounted device, I could see this being useful for industrial applications, serving as a guide to workers piecing things together.
I'd rather have a Predator laser / plasma gun on my shoulder. That would be awesome. Pew pew pew!
I think this is fine...if you can conceal it in a Parrot figure...then nobody would know you're walking around with a shoulder mounted camera.
Aaaaarrrrggghhhh!
Shrink this to the size of a medal, stick it on your chest and use like a kinect sensor
really cool stuff! though dont see it being practical for the common man everyday for awhile though