Portable Large Interactive Display

[vimeo http://vimeo.com/5452585%5D

[HyPe] over at the Natural User Interface Group developed this concept as part of his Master’s Degree in Industrial Design. This suitcase sized projector and computer allows people to have a 60″ multitouch screen available wherever there is a large enough surface.  The current software is designed for ad-hoc meetings about large-scale construction plans. The rolling case includes a short-throw projector and webcam. Just set it on top of your work surface, lift the lid, and it’s ready to go.

21 thoughts on “Portable Large Interactive Display

  1. since it projects at an angle, it might be able to see the shadow cast by your finger. when the finger meets its shadow, it knows your touching, maybe. but hell, i gotta get me some of that!

  2. Sweet. Good to see an old idea being made much more friendly. I wonder if a prism could be use to help project on to a wall from below, rather than from a table top… that’s always been a dream of mine.

  3. Ditto for the question above – some info on how “pointing” is differentiated from “gesturing” would be awful nice. I can think of several ways to do it, but I’m interested in how he specifically did it.

    I can foresee some “gorilla arms” from this (your arm floats over the surface of the illustration rather than touching it) but hell – I’ll take 2!

  4. Some of these interactive augmented displays are pretty cool, but I tend to question their practicality though. I mean, I would like to do more than shuffling 2D bitmaps around.

  5. i agree. Dont get me wrong it is verry nice and i would love to have one as well, but 3d wouldent hurt. come to think of it, you can use IR for 3d graphics as well if you have the space….

  6. It should work like this:
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yrceibbdf9a

    That is a stanford lecture from 2006 by a guy at microsoft who eventually made their “Surface” tables. It’s really interesting stuff. I had a webcam configured so that it could tell when you were touching a wall, in an effort to make a really cool projector system for the home, but i got lazy and never finished. Did get it to detect when and where you were touching a wall though!
    -Taylor

  7. I don’t know. I was a beta tester for a virtual IR keyboard, and I hated it. There was no feedback, lots of problems with incorrect inputs. It just wasn’t that great of a system, will this one be any better?

  8. The projector is a 2000ANSI lumen projector, on such a small distance the brightness is enormous. And it helps that the woodgrain surface is lightwood coloured. On very dark coloured tables a sheet of paper or something is needed to make the projection brighter.

    The software is capable of loading up 3d objects, but since the laptop powering it did not have any sufficient power to power 3d in flash (yup it was done in flash) it was omitted in the footage,
    It is possible to draw annotations on the images in the prototype application with your finger. However I intended the use of wireless pens to transfer accurate notes and drawings – budget and time-wise this was not available for me at the time.
    Furthermore deadline for the graduation date was too close to refine this more.

    If you don’t touch the surface, the camera system will not detect your hand, since nothing reflects the laser light. Because of occlusion in the camera system, putting your elbow on the table does not matter much.

    If you flip the suitcase, and put it against the wall, you have a wall projection, which is also touch enabled -tried it, but a normal white wall is much more icky to touch than the smooth meeting tables.

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