G-speak Spatial Operating Environment

November 17, 2008 by Eliot 14 Comments

[vimeo 2229299]

Our fascination with multitouch is fairly well known, but it expands even further to cover all sorts of man machine interaction. Embedded above is a tech demo of g-speak, a spatial operating environment. The user combines gestures and spatial location to interact with on screen objects. If it seems familiar, it’s because one of the company’s founders advised on Minority Report. We doubt all this hand waving is going to catch on very quickly though. Our bet is on someone developing a multitouch Cintiq style device for people to use as a secondary monitor. It would bridge the gap between between our standard 2D interactions and gestures without making a full leap to 3D metaphors.

[via Create Digital Motion]

IR Glass Level Detection

November 7, 2008 by Eliot 15 Comments

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DG3_2lvoL8A]

[Johnny Lee]’s colleague [Paul Dietz] has done some interesting work using interactive tables. He’s specifically researched how to determine how full a drink glass is. In the video above, he’s using Microsoft’s Surface, but this technique should work with any IR camera based multitouch table. Determining the drink level requires custom glassware that has a small prism inside. When the liquid level is above the prism, light passes through, but when it’s below the top it reflects more IR light back into the table. Using this information, restaurant staff could serve drinks in a more efficient manner.

[Paul] has worked on another project that uses RFID and capacitive sensing to a similar effect.

PS3 Eye As A Webcam On Windows

September 30, 2008 by Caleb Kraft 12 Comments

The NUI Group has been working hard to bring the PS3 Eye to windows. From the factory, this device has pretty impressive specs, but no windows drivers. After a bit of hacking, they’ve developed a driver for it and released it on their forums. The main reason they are so interested in it is that it can capture full frame at 60 frames per second, making it perfect for multi touch sensing. Now that they’ve got it working with windows, they’re working on a custom PS3 Eye filter for touchlib.

[via PS3 Fanboy, thanks vor]

Tablo, Fabric Gesture Controller

August 1, 2008 by Caleb Kraft 8 Comments

[Adrian Freed] posted this interesting fabric gesture controller called Tablo. It uses a stretchy conductive fabric, laid over a framework to create a curve known as the Witch of Agnesi. Holding the center of the fabric up is an inverted bowl covered with sections of conductive material. The whole thing is wired to a microcontroller that measures the resistance fluctuations when you press on the fabric. It is capable of measuring displacement and pressure as well as being multitouch.

They mention that the simple interface allows it to be used as a foot input as well as a hand input. We’d love to see a video of it in action.

UnMouse Cheap Multitouch Prototype

July 31, 2008 by Caleb Kraft 11 Comments

A Microsoft research team has delivered a prototype called the UnMouse that could really be a big hit. This unit is a mouse pad sized sensor that is multitouch and pressure sensitive. It is flexible and thin enough to roll up. The article mentions that the construction of the device is “dirt cheap”. This is very exciting; is this the next mouse?

The idea of having low cost multitouch input is very enticing. While there are many ways to do multitouch right now, most are limited by their large size due to projector/camera setups or high cost such as the iPhone. A portable (fits in your laptop bag) pressure sensitive multitouch input device is something that a lot of people have been craving for a while.

Just imagine the uses. Audio engineers could create new interfaces on the fly. You could draw a key map on piece of paper and just lay it on top. Graphic designers could use different sized and shaped brushes. Gamers could make their own ergonomically comfortable gaming layouts. How about covering one in Velcro and attaching buttons to it?

Dell Tablets Support Multitouch

July 14, 2008 by Eliot 4 Comments

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=arrkdO_SDm8&hl=en&fs=1&rel=0&color1=0x3a3a3a&color2=0x999999]
Dell announced today that it will be offering a free multitouch upgrade to their Latitude XT tablets. You may remember Microsoft using an XT when they first demoed the multitouch features in Windows 7. Dell’s new firmware update will allow users to scroll, scale, and assign macros to other gestures. The laptop is using capacitive touch technology, so don’t expect accurate tracking of multiple fingertips. We’re happy to see a manufacturer take time to roll this out even if widespread adoption probably won’t happen. Now to see if some one can get it working with OSx86. As with most technology we encourage you to build it yourself.

[via Gizmodo]

Touchkit – IR Multitouch Screen

July 8, 2008 by Will O'Brien 11 Comments

If you’ve got an extra grand laying around, you can pre-order one of [nortd]’s touchkits. It features a unique custom made acrylic screen with a crap ton of IR LEDs embedded in it. An included IR camera provides the input and a projector (you get to supply your own) is used to light the surface. We mentioned this in our multitouch roundup and you can find a video of it embedded after the break.