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- December 15th, 2005
Touchlight is new interactive display technology developed by researcher Andy Wilson from Microsoft Research. The Touchlight technology was presented at the SIGGRAPH 2005 Emerging Technologies venue and focuses on using different surfaces as alternative computer interfaces.
The technical implementation of Touchlight consists of combining a translucent holographic film projection material and computer vision techniques. Two infrared video cameras, one still camera, and an infrared illuminator are mounted behind the projection material. Alignment of the output images of the two video cameras combined with image processing techniques enables the user to interact with the screen. The image becomes bright where the user’s hands are touching or nearly touching the screen, thereby enabling the user to draw light across the surface of the screen with his hands.
The characteristics of the projection material that constitutes the screen make it possible to project onto the material and see through it at the same time. Because of the transparency of the screen, it is possible to use the digital still camera behind the screen to capture a high resolution picture of an object placed on the surface. Optical flow techniques are then used to enable the user to interact with the picture in a natural and fluid way, e.g. rotate and scale the picture by merely touching and pulling the image.
Check out the explanatory video of Touchlight and a presentation of Touchlight at the Microsoft Research’s faculty summit.
Related projects: The Cabinet, Natural Interaction, The Multi-Touch Sensing Through FTIR Display, tabulaTouch and Tangent.
Touchlight enables you to draw light across the surface of the screen with your hands. Optical flow techniques make it possible to rotate and scale the high resolution picture by merely touching and pulling the image.
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7 People had this to say...
[...] I m growing fond of computer vision videos, i.e. those videos which document automatic analysis tasks applied to video. For example: this webpage carries 3 videos of shot classification, if you don t know what is just watch the videos and it will be become clear. More videos for more tasks this weblog documents a student’s project in 3d Human-computer interaction and there you can watch a video which shows automatic hand tracking This website show pics from Touchlight, a “Minority Report” -like user interface, looks interesting but I could not yet get the explanatory video to play. [...]
[...] The Cabinet features a search function based on images and distances instead of words: the patented Multi Dimensional Scaling Interactive System (MDS-1). This system enables the user to simply place the pointing device between two images by which the computer searches the database for images that resemble the chosen two. In this way, the search function supports the creative process which often consists of developing new combinations of different material. Read the explanatory article. Related projects: Touchlight, Natural Interaction, The Multi-Touch Sensing Through FTIR Dispay, tabulaTouch and Tangent. [...]
[...] Related projects: Natural Interaction, The Cabinet, Touchlight, tabulaTouch and Tangent. [...]
[...] More projects and videos can be found here. Related projects: Touchlight and the Cabinet, The Multi-Touch Sensing Through FTIR Display, tabulaTouch and Tangent. [...]
[...] Related projects: tabulaTouch, The Multi-Touch Sensing Through FTIR Display, Touchlight and Tangent. [...]
imagine this can be the future of pc
instead of keyboard and monitor use a surface !
this can be possible in few years
This looks incredible!!!!
When is it likely to be mainstream? I see they are selling to businesses.
Had a look at http://www.touchlight.com
But nothing as of yet
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