Wearable Projector and Kinect-Like Camera Turns Any Object Into a Touchscreen

By Rebecca Boyle Posted 10.18.2011 at 3:50 pm 12 Comments

Paper Touchscreen Chris Harrison

A new wearable projection system can turn any surface into an ad-hoc interactive touchscreen, from the palm of your hand to an entire wall. It combines a mini projector combined with a Kinect-type camera to capture a user’s interaction with a virtual screen.

It doesn’t need any buttons or keys — although you could probably draw one if you want — but superimposes them onto any surface you want to use. A Kinect-style infrared depth-sensing camera builds a dynamic 3-D map of your environment, using reflected infrared light to calculate surfaces even as you move around. The laser pico-projector adjusts accordingly, compensating for the surface’s shape and size to prevent distortion.

The system is able to distinguish finger-shaped cylindrical objects, and can sense whether fingers are “clicking” or hovering over something, according to a news release from Carnegie Mellon University. You can type or swipe like you would with a regular touchscreen.

For now, it’s a bulky setup worn on the shoulder, but it could eventually be minimized to become the size of a deck of cards. Co-inventor Chris Harrison, a researcher at CMU who developed the system while an intern at Microsoft, said it could eventually be integrated into future handheld devices.

Harrison also worked on a similar system we told you about last year, the Skinput, which turned a person’s hand or arm into a touchscreen. That system used acoustic sensors to detect the location of finger taps on the hands or forearm, so it was limited to the skin, which seemed cool but not necessarily as useful. By contrast, the OmniTouch system can use any surface of any size, which could make it much more practical.

The team is presenting research with OmniTouch this week at the ACM Symposium on User Interface Software and Technology in Santa Barbara.

[CMU News]

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12 Comments

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vt007

10/18/11 at 4:02 pm

gimmy gimmy gimmy!!!
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bored? lets go mine the stars... ^^

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funkyskunk2

10/18/11 at 4:50 pm

Isn't this a rip off of this guys work?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mzKmGTVmqJs

yeah from 2009

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qksilver

10/18/11 at 4:53 pm

Can this remember what I read? as in if I bring back a page that I was reading, the highlights I made would come back... because that'd be epic!!

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-my name here-

10/18/11 at 5:18 pm

hmm... the possibilities...

----------------------------------------
why learn from your own mistakes, when you could learn from the mistakes of others?
“The most incomprehensible thing about the universe is that it is comprehensible” -Albert Einstein

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pheonix1012

10/18/11 at 5:41 pm

"And I say to myself, 'What a wonderful world!'."

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10/18/11 at 6:20 pm

I really enjoyed the fantasy movie Iron Man and were the scientist in his lab is speaking to his computer and robots and a 3D projection happens in front of him and with voice and physical gestures he is designing.

This little device seems to be a baby step in that direction. VERY COOL!

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inaka_rob

10/18/11 at 9:32 pm

Turn the projector into a HUD instead, and make it all fit into my glasses, and you have the future.

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chaunceylock

10/18/11 at 9:58 pm

This is extremely alike the sixthsense device from MIT media labs. It was all open sourced and used stuff from an office depot for cheapish. It was pretty awesome, just never went very far. Maybe this company will bring it to the mass market

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Bareassedmunky

10/19/11 at 7:24 am

ipad killer!

If you can dispence with the cost of a touchscreen, you can either produce mobile computing devices which are cheaper and more flexible, or faster (and more flexible)...I think this is a stepping stone towards augmented reality based computing, but I think that is still a long way off so I can see this concept going far.

But I think it will have a bit of a social hurdle insofaras people not being happy to have a computer sitting on their shoulder, and the potential for a wayward projection blinding a random person on the tube...

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Juggernog

10/19/11 at 7:49 am

Does this work with the actual Kinect sensor? because that would give my kinect a new purpose besides just sitting there

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johnathynstrong

10/19/11 at 2:43 pm

john

this looks cool I can not wait to tern my wall in to a touch screen!!!!

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Sprite

10/20/11 at 9:34 pm

Going to the local book store and buy a buck and half highlighter sure be a lot easier, than spending several hundred dollars, ya think! ;)

Just kidding, I really think this is cool and look forward to where this goes in the future. GOOD JOB! SMILES!

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