Image credit: Microsoft
By Byron Spice
PITTSBURGH—OmniTouch, a wearable projection system developed by researchers at Microsoft Research and Carnegie Mellon University, enables users to turn pads of paper, walls or even their own hands, arms and legs into graphical, interactive surfaces.
OmniTouch employs a depth-sensing camera, similar to the Microsoft Kinect, to track the user’s fingers on everyday surfaces. This allows users to control interactive applications by tapping or dragging their fingers, much as they would with touchscreens found on smartphones or tablet computers. The projector can superimpose keyboards, keypads and other controls onto any surface, automatically adjusting for the surface’s shape and orientation to minimize distortion of the projected images.
“It’s conceivable that anything you can do on today’s mobile devices, you will be able to do on your hand using OmniTouch,” said Chris Harrison, a Ph.D. student in Carnegie Mellon’s Human-Computer Interaction Institute. The palm of the hand could be used as a phone keypad, or as a tablet for jotting down brief notes. Maps projected onto a wall could be panned and zoomed with the same finger motions that work with a conventional multitouch screen.
http://www.cmu.edu/news/stories/archives/2011/october/oct17_omnitouch.html
