A research project from Intel can turn any surface into a touchscreen. Instead of propping up a tablet or putting a touchscreen computer in your kitchen, picture yourself tapping on the countertop to pull menus, look up recipes and add items to a shopping list.
“There’s nothing absolutely special about the surface and it doesn’t matter if your hands are dirty,” says Beverly Harrison, a senior research scientist at Intel. “Our algorithm and a camera set-up can create virtual islands everywhere”
Intel demoed the project during the company’s annual research day fest on Wednesday to show touchscreens can go beyond computing and become a part of everyday life.
The project uses real-time 3-D object recognition to build a model of almost anything that’s placed on the counter and responds by offering a a virtual touchscreen-based menu. For instance, when you put a slab of meat on the counter or a green pepper, they are identified and a virtual menu that includes recipes for both are shown.
“The computer in a real-time builds a model of the color, shape, texture of the objects and runs it against a database to identify it,” says Harrison, “and it requires nothing special to be attached on the steak or the pepper.”
Smartphones have turned touch into a popular user interface. Many consumers are happy to give the BlackBerry thumb a pass and instead swipe and flick their finger to scroll. New tablets are also likely to make users kind beyond a physical keyboard and mouse.
But so far, touchscreens have been limited to carefully calibrated pieces of glass encased in the shell of a phone or a computer.
Intel researchers say that won’t be the case in the future. Ordinary coffee tables in the living room could morph into a touchscreen when you put a finger on it and show a menu of music, video to choose from. Or a vanity table in the bathroom could recognize a bottle of pills placed on it and let you manage your medications from there.
Some companies are trying to expand the use of touchscreens. For instance, Displax, a Portugal-based company, can turn any surface flat or curved into a touch-sensitive display by sticking a thinner-than-paper polymer film on that surface to make it interactive.
Intel research labs tries to do away with the extra layer. Instead, researchers there have created a rig with two cameras, one to capture the image of the objects and the other to capture depth. The depth cameras help recognize the objects and the difference between the hand touching the table or hovering over it. A pico projector helps beam the virtual menus. The cameras and the pico projector combination can be packaged into devices just a little bigger than your cellphone, says Harrison. Sprinkle a few of these in different rooms and point them on tables and the system is ready to go.
At that point, the software program that Harrison and her team have written kicks in. The program, which can run on any computer anywhere in the house, helps identify objects accurately and create the virtual menus. Just make a wide sweeping gesture to push the menu off the counter and it disappears. There’s even a virtual drawer that users can pull up to store images and notes.
Harrison says all this will work on almost any surface including glass, granite and wood.
“The key here is the idea requires no special instrumentation,” she says.
Still it may be too early to make plans to remodel the kitchen to include this new system. The idea is still in the research phase, says Harrison, and it may be years before it makes it to the real world.
Photo: A countertop acts as a touchscreen display/Priya Ganapati
Source:wired.com
Posted under Gadget Reviews
This post was written by Journalist on July 1, 2010
Tags: Finger Fail: Why Most Touchscreens Miss the Point, Intel, Intel Researchers Turn Countertops Into Touchscreens, interface, kitchen, lab, pico, project, projectors, research, Skinput Turns Your Arm into a Touch-Screen, Sony Promises Emotion Detecting Touchscreen Table, Thin Film Turns Any Surface Into a Touchscreen, touchscreen, user
