Tuesday, June 19, 2012

Taking Touchscreens to the Next Level


Touchscreen technology will expand beyond fingertips, evolving to incorporate artificial intelligence, light and even sound.
This year's Computer Human Interface conference featured several new touchscreen inventions, as over 2,500 international researchers presented their work in Austin, Texas. Scientists and inventors showcased everything from medical to social networking and gaming-related touchscreen technologies, touching on a variety of intriguing directions that interfaces will take in the future.
The results will not only transform phones, tablets and other handsets in the future, but expand touch technology into other avenues.
Making Phones More Responsive
For example, a Microsoft invention, SoundWave, uses the Doppler effect, rather than cameras, to interpret users' hand motions. The technology, which detect movement by measuring changes in sound waves, permits researchers to control Web pages by swiping the air and waving their arms. SoundWave's creators predict it may one day replace current mobile touch technologies.
Two scientists from the Universities of Maryland and Washington impressed CHI attendees with an artificially intelligent touch screen keyboard. The AI-powered keyboard can detect whether users regularly hit the tops or bottoms of keys and reposition them accordingly for maximum accuracy. It can enlarge keys as well, making them easier and faster to tap. The innovation could be used to create touch-input keyboards that adjust themselves to how users tap and type, making for a more comfortable, accurate experience.
In a move to make it even easier for users to control their devices, computer scientists from the University of Munich contributed ShoeSense, a wearable sensor that lets people use hand gestures to control mobile devices in their pockets. For example, ShoeSense users can swipe a finger down their forearms to control volume on their music players and even pinch themselves three times to send emails from a pocketed smartphone.
Expanding Touchscreens Beyond Phones and Tablets
Beyond devices, CHI researchers also seek to elevate touchscreens beyond daily mobile phone and tablet use, citing their potentially revolutionary applications in medicine and science. For example, Microsoft researchers presented a LightGuide prototype to help physical therapists rehabilitate stroke victims.
The innovation aims to prevent patients from practicing hand exercises incorrectly by tracking their movements with Kinect cameras and projecting visual cues onto their fingers. Researchers are still developing their technology, but once completed it could serve to replace in-home physical therapy visits.
HoloDeskalso reaches beyond tablets and phones to project virtual content onto a curved screen with a 3D stereoscopic device. The technology lets users manipulate these 3D images with their hands, evoking a "Star Trek"-like hologram display. HoloDeskalso has strong gaming possibilities, but also could find a place in the medical imaging field, allowing professionals to interact with information and images in a whole new way.
Joining Revolutions in Touchscreens Already in Place
CHI brought together a legion of researchers looking to expand touch technology, but touchscreens and interfaces have been the subject of innovation for some time.
In the medical field, Korea's Advanced Institute of Science and Technology recently developed ultra-sensitive touch screens capable of detecting biomolecular material. They may one day diagnose diseases like skin cancer just by touching patients' bodies.
E-Sense already permits blind people to read Braille and draw pictures via tactile pixels that respond more sensitively than regular touch screens. The breakthrough technology is already at work in high school classrooms, helping students understand the visual components of mathematics.
Meanwhile, Touche, another tactile sensing technology, can make any smooth surface into a touch screen using simple projection techniques.
"This might enable us to one day do away with keyboards, mice and perhaps even conventional touchscreens for many applications," Munehiko Sato, one of Touche's researchers, explained.
If CHI is any indication, touch screen technology like Touche, SoundWave and LightGuide may quickly surpass traditional computing input methods, moving from static typed commands to more fluid gestures and motions that can have broader applications beyond mobile devices.   View the original article here

No comments:

Post a Comment