Touch Me Baby

February 11, 2006 6:58 PM

This very cool multi-input touchscreen is an amazing example of potential human-computer interfaces and is not the same thing as the very cool Lemur device marketed in the US by Cycling 74. It really makes you realize that there's a whole new level of graphics, animation, 3D, music and control technology yet to be explored. Fascinating stuff.
posted by dbiedny (29 comments total)

Oh, sorry, Embedded video and soundtrack.
posted by dbiedny at 7:05 PM on February 11, 2006

Can I say 'Minority Report' before anybody else does?
posted by gimonca at 7:09 PM on February 11, 2006

Oops!
posted by rob511 at 7:11 PM on February 11, 2006

Some of the first examples left me a bit...underwhelmed. I thought they got better as you get further into the demo.
posted by gimonca at 7:11 PM on February 11, 2006

I guess that's what I get for not reading every thread.
posted by gimonca at 7:12 PM on February 11, 2006

rob511 - damn, I missed that one. Feel free to delete this thread.
posted by dbiedny at 7:16 PM on February 11, 2006

Well I hadn't seen it before and it's fucktastic, so thanks. I hope it'll be available sometime soon.
posted by Citizen Premier at 7:23 PM on February 11, 2006

I hadn't caught it before either. Waaaaay cool. Our kids are gonna think we grew up in the dark ages of computing. CRTs? Keyboards? Mice? Disk drives? So primitive.

Can anyone identify the music playing with the video?
posted by Tubes at 7:36 PM on February 11, 2006

Unless they write a porn demo it will probably stay in the lab or high-end specialized apps.
posted by stbalbach at 7:37 PM on February 11, 2006

that's hella awesome
posted by pyramid termite at 7:38 PM on February 11, 2006

I missed the first go around too.

This + Live and Reason = wetness
posted by Bucket o' Heads at 7:40 PM on February 11, 2006

Ok..I just watched the whole video.

This + anything = wetness
posted by Bucket o' Heads at 7:42 PM on February 11, 2006

Bucket o' Heads: This thing and Isadora = Sheer Madness
posted by dbiedny at 7:42 PM on February 11, 2006

I didn't see it the first time either. That is WAY cool. I haven't been that jazzed by a new interface since seeing the original Macintosh.

Just like with the Mac, I'm not entirely sure what it would be good for, but I want it. :)
posted by Malor at 7:43 PM on February 11, 2006

Oh wow..thanks dbiedny! I hadn't heard of Isadora before..time to play!

now, who do I need to fuck, blow, kill or feed tasty popsicles to to get this thing?
posted by Bucket o' Heads at 7:46 PM on February 11, 2006

Can anyone identify the music playing with the video?

"Who Am I?" by Peace Orchestra, from the Animatrix soundtrack.


Entirely awesome interface there. I want.
posted by Foosnark at 7:47 PM on February 11, 2006

i missed that the first time too ... well, you know what's going to happen, but thanks for pointing it out
posted by pyramid termite at 7:50 PM on February 11, 2006

hint to demo-makers: the BGM is like 80% of the take-away...
posted by Heywood Mogroot at 8:16 PM on February 11, 2006

The guy that worked on this, Jeff Han, also did some early work on CU-seeme. Some interesting projects on his home page at NYU.
posted by F Mackenzie at 9:23 PM on February 11, 2006

I saw a live demo of the Grumann Touch Table, last year, which looks exactly like the same interface.

As far as I know the Touch Table is in production and being sold to the military.
posted by vacapinta at 10:15 PM on February 11, 2006

Except for the fingerprints. All it takes is one snot-nosed kid and you're not going to want to touch that screen.
posted by mono blanco at 10:39 PM on February 11, 2006

This is like a weaker version of the playtable that MS designed and built, and which was hinted at in Gate's 2006 CES keynote. I've seen it as a fully working model months and months ago, and it does all this does and more- not only the multiple fingers/hands interface, but scanning of barcodes, scanning of pictures and text right on the screen, etc.

Of course, the idiots at MS wouldn't think to release this and get the good buzz for it; they'll sit on it indefinitely and probably release a crappier version for no good reason.
posted by hincandenza at 11:49 PM on February 11, 2006

Apple has just filed some patents covering almost exactly this. We may see this on a tablet PC in the very near future! Yes!!
posted by Meridian at 11:53 PM on February 11, 2006

I believe the current rumor on Apple's touchscreen patents is that they're going to cover a touchscreen interface on the new "proper" widescreen video iPod.
posted by LondonYank at 3:56 AM on February 12, 2006

... the current rumor on Apple's touchscreen patents is that they're going to cover a touchscreen interface on the new "proper" widescreen video iPod.

In that case, someone may hack it to load Linux and create a sweet little multi-input device that can be plugged into a Mac or PC. Not ideal, but at least it would be an interesting experiment.
posted by Meridian at 4:30 AM on February 12, 2006

There are a number of different multi-touch technologies out there. The MERL folks were some of the first ones to invent a practical multi-touch display technology (and theirs has the advantage of being able to detect and track multiple users). It's based on capacitance, the same thing that your laptop trackpad uses.

That said, Jeff's stuff is damn cool. He came up with a pretty clever method of doing multi-touch detection -- basically, he uses an array of IR LEDs to shoot a whole bunch of infrared light into the side of a glass pane; the light ricochets around due to internal reflection. However, when you press something up against the pane, it causes the IR to bounce right out again. This bounced IR shows up in a digital camera image as a glow wherever you press against the glass. Throw in some basic computer vision and rear projection, and you've got a very cheap, flexible, and (most importantly) SCALABLE multi-touch display. Throw enough cameras and projectors at it and you can have an entire wall display that's interactive. Of course, it can't track individual users (yet) . . . .
posted by xthlc at 7:01 AM on February 12, 2006

This won't be actually cool until Apple invents it.
posted by juiceCake at 10:43 AM on February 12, 2006

Why hasn't this been deleted? It's the same exact link as this, a few days earlier. I even mentioned the apple patents!
posted by BlackLeotardFront at 1:01 PM on February 12, 2006

'Cuz then we'd lose the additional conversation here.
posted by Tubes at 3:06 PM on February 12, 2006