Multi-Touch Interaction Research — Includes an interesting video.If you think a plasma ball is fun, check this out! I want one!
While touch sensing is commonplace for single points of contact, multi-touch sensing enables a user to interact with a system with more than one finger at a time, as in chording and bi-manual operations. Such sensing devices are inherently also able to accommodate multiple users simultaneously, which is especially useful for larger interaction scenarios such as interactive walls and tabletops.
Since refining the FTIR (frustrated total internal reflection) sensing technique, we’ve been experimenting with a wide variety of application scenarios and interaction modalities that utilize multi-touch input information. These go far beyond the “poking” actions you get with a typical touchscreen, or the gross gesturing found in video-based interactive interfaces. It is a rich area for research, and we are extremely excited by its potential for advances in efficiency, usability, and intuitiveness. It’s also just so much fun!
found by E. Cash
Isn’t this what Apple is working on?
This is a repeat.
Delete it so we have more time with the Walmart thread at the bottom.
Rumour is that Apple is working on this (or has it)…but, as a devout-yet-sane resident of the Steve Jobs Reality Distortion Zone, I always thought it was more just about having two (potential) inputs on a single touchscreen…but, I’m sure this is my own being stuck in the current input paradigm, I have never really seen such a great demonstration of how an interface could use the two points to do more than just capture two sets of coordinates. The zoom features and the spatial work (when they pin down one piece of the display or object and them move the other point of reference) really makes this seem like it could be more than a linear advancement of the old touchscreen model.
Even writing this I’m thinking it is just me who missed seeing the potential…but, well, there have to be more of us out there or I’d have expected to hear more about this technology sooner…and from sources OTHER than my usual Apple-Rumour haunts.
If it turns out they are giving these away, sign me up.
I’m a professional graphic designer and I would LOVE to work using one of those. Designing using my hands? A dream!
looks like a chaos pad..
Electronic finger paint
Reminds me of that computer Tom Cruise uses in Minority Report.
Some similiar tech: http://www.k2.t.u-tokyo.ac.jp/fusion/LaserActiveTracking/I-02-cassinelli.mpg