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The interactive projector that turns any surface into a Minority Report-style touch screen

By Claire Bates

From: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/

Fed up of lugging a heavy laptop around? Soon you could be typing documents and browsing the web on any nearby surface with the aid of a pioneering pocket-sized projector.

An innovative British company called Light Blue Optics has created the Light Touch, which transforms any surface into a 10.1in touch screen, reminiscent of the film Minority Report.

The Light Touch works well with social networking sites and can be used to update your Twitter account

The system uses holographic laser projection and infrared sensors to create a screen that supports multi-touch gestures, like many smart phones.

The device was unveiled by the Cambridge based company at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas.

Dr Edward Buckley was on hand to show off its impressive features, including games, photo galleries and a video player with the brightness of 15 lumens.

'With the photo application you can drag your pictures around into an order you like, view one by touching on it and also scroll through them. It's much like on an iPhone,' he told reporters.

Dr Buckley from Light Blue Optics said the projectors could be useful in restaurants, shops and hotels

Dr Buckley was even able to connect to his Twitter account online using the Light Touch's Wi Fi connection.
Technology pundits at the show were surprised at how accurate the gadget was.

Thomas Ricker from engadget.com said: 'Despite our skepticism, we came away suitably surprised - impressed even.

'The touch sensitivity was far more accurate than we expected - so good that we were quickly typing out phrases on the QWERTY with few mistakes.'

How the holographic projector works

Holographic refers to the novel method of projection used by the Light Touch.
A distorted version of the desired image is placed on a  microdisplay using diffraction patterns (the effective bending of light waves.)

When this is illuminated with a laser it projects the correct image outwards, remaining in focus at all distances.
It also works on curved surfaces.

This makes it far more flexible than Microsoft Surface that needs large touchscreen panels attached to surfaces.

Fiction to reality: Surface computers were imagined in the film Minority Report

It currently has 2Gb of storage with SD card expansion. Dr Buckley said the technology also had the capability of connecting to other devices such as MP3 players and phones.
'We are developing technology but we want to work with other companies to bring it to market,' Dr Buckley said.
He said the device could be useful in restaurants, hotels and retail outlets to name a few.

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-1241608/CES-2010-The-interactive-projector-turns-surface-Minority-Report-style-touch-screen.html#ixzz0cKEzjMRh

2nd Generation of 'Microsoft Surface' Coming in 2-3 Years

By Darren Waters Technology editor, BBC News website, Texas

Microsoft Surface is helping re-think how we interact with computers

A second generation of Microsoft's Surface computing device is two to three years away, the South by SouthWest Festival has heard.

Developer Joe Olsen, whose company Phenomblue writes applications for the Surface, said he had been told the device was still in the development stage.

"They haven't even got to point where they are going to commercialise," he said.

Chris Bernard, user experience evangelist for Microsoft, said he could not confirm a release date.

Surface is a multi-touch computer in the shape of a table, with a flat screen that can "read" multi-touch gestures, as well as content from printed material placed onto the device, thanks to five cameras inside the machine.

It is being developed with enterprise, tourism and public-facing solutions in mind and launches in the UK next week.

Dubbed Second Light, the Surface 2 will build on the original model and have a second projector inside the table computer that can project images onto a layer above the surface of the screen.

In effect, the device will be able to overlay secondary images above those on the screen - such as satellite imagery over a street map, or more detailed contextual data on top of images.

Shift in interaction

Devices like the Surface are changing how we interact with computers

The machine will also have infrared sensors that can interpret gestures and movements without having to touch the screen.

Mr Olsen said Microsoft staff at Redmond had told him that the device was still in being worked on within Research and Development.

Erik Klimczak, creative director of Clarity Consulting, which also produces applications for the Surface, said he expected the next generation to have high-definition cameras.

"Right now they are limited to how much detail they can pick up," he said.

Devices like the Surface, as well as Apple's iPhone, are at the vanguard of a shift in how we interact with computers.

"Everything is moving to touch and multi-touch so you had better jump on that bandwagon," Mr Klimczak told the conference of web developers.

London Restaurant Uses Touchpads for Orders, Projectors for Mood Alteration

By Jose Fermoso

The Inamo restaurant in London's fashionable SoHo district isn't known for its splendid food or outstandingly accommodating waitresses.

Instead, the new Asian fusion eatery is getting raves for its use of a touch pad-projection system that allows diners to send food orders directly to the chefs and makes the dining experience fully interactive.

Every table at Inamo has its own image projector above (see pic at right), meaning every person essentially gets to eat off a giant computer screen. This allows the restaurant to offer several interesting experiences, like selecting the mood of the table by choosing between different 'place mat' images and videos. According to a recent diner, the rig is based on a flash/actionscript system.

When you're waiting for your meal to arrive, you can click on a kitchen camera that let's you see your food being prepared, play different types of computer board games (like Battleship), and when you're done, you can separate bills and boot up a map to figure out your next move around town.

But for me, the best part seems to be that when you're choosing through potential dining options, a picture of the food appears on the plate where you'll be eating it. I'm not sure if the size of the picture approximates the size of the actual meal, but I think this is better than just the syrupy, dramatized meal explanation one usually gets.

As for the circular touch pad, it seems pretty basic, though I do worry about whether the restaurant changes its surface once in awhile to clean it. Otherwise, you have to rely on other people's hand-washing abilities or dip your hand in a tub of Purella before taking a bite.

Even though your ordering experience is pretty much automated, every table does have a waiter that brings over the meal and answers questions about the system.

Check out a few more pictures of the Inamo restaurant after the jump.

The projectors at a standstill before the diners come in. Dan.Pan.*/flickr

You can check out the Kitchen cam from your own table. Phillie Casablanca/Flickr

This is how you choose the different color moods. Phil Hawksworth/flickr

Finding out the subway routes on the table. Phil Hawksworth/flickr

Playing Battleship and drinking now go together. Phillie Casablanca/Flickr

Actual food, looks too much like tapas' 'small plate' dining for my taste. Dan.Pan.*/flickr

Insert Photo: lauronsky/Flickr

See also:

Why Minority Report-Style OS Is Coming To PCs Sooner Than You Think

| posted by Kit Eaton

Windows Icons Mice and Pointers--the WIMP environment is how we've been piloting our computers since the clever guys at Xerox PARC developed the system in the early 1970's. The mouse itself has just turned 40 years old. But a number of technologies are just about to change everything, and bring Minority Report-alike futuristic computer interfaces into reality.

Our interaction with technology is already more physical than typing and mice: Nintendo's Wii is raking in the cash because the motion-sensing Wiimote allows for a degree of "natural" control over games that's not been seen before. Apple's iPhone and its laptops, incorporate multi-touch technology, making sophisticated command-interactions with the devices as easy as touching their surfaces in different ways.

Hands-free gesture interactions are an everyday occurrence too. Sony's EyeToy webcam plugin for the PlayStation lets you play games by running, jumping, waving and punching on the spot while the webcam stares at you and the CPU works out how what the heck you're up to.

Key to driving our gadgets into an even more gesture-based future are a couple of technological breakthroughs.

Firstly, position and movement sensing is now cheap and reliable enough to be simply incorporated into everyday gadgets. Microscopic semiconductor accelerometers in the iPhone sense how you're waving it about. The Wii, meanwhile, combines accelerometers with an infra-red positioning system to locate the Wiimote in 3D space in near-real time.

Secondly, display technology is developing almost faster than technology writers can keep up with it. The humble LCD has gone through a trillion refinements, and can now be reliably manufactured in sizes that would've dazzled its inventors. Panasonic have crafted a single-unit plasma display used in a gargantuan 150-inch TV. Flat displays are now also flexible. But industry is already exploring standards for displaying 3D imagery on future TVs, and holographic displays are being invented left, right and center.

Most importantly of all, integrated circuit revolutions of all types, from cell architecture to shrinking transistor sizes have given CPUs potentially "spare" power. This means devices can perform all the motion-capturing, interpret it, apply it to controling software and display the results with ease. And do it cheaply too.

Sensing the future, Apple has just patented an enhanced version of its desktop that incorporates 3D elements and "real physics" properties: dropping a file gets a more literal meaning. And Oblong Industrie has seized the Minority Report idea, and combined existing technologies into a prototype UI called G-Speak. If it looks amazingly similar to the way Tom Cruise interacted with his machines it's because one of the company founders worked on the movie.

WIMP works because it's a closer analog to traditional paper and pen desks, and it sealed the fate of text-based command-line computing. But traditional paper-based desktops don't fully marry with how we really interact with objects: items have 3D physical properties. We move them in three dimensions, we organise, associate thoughts, feelings, impressions with, and get new ideas from physical objects very differently.

Which is why 3D fully-interactive gesture-based user interfaces, thanks to technological paradigm shifts, will be on your desktop--or hovering above it--sometime sooner than you think.

Minority Report Gesture UI Is Now Really Real: G-Speak

By Kit Eaton,

Un-frickin-believable: there've been a few pretenders, but it looks like this new G-Speak system is really the Minority Report UI made into science-faction. It even has gloves something akin to Tom Cruise's natty controllers from the film, and it lets you do the whole arms waving in the air, drag items between screens, object-oriented interface control.

Though you might not have Tom's trademark piercing stare while you're at it. And if you think, "holy crap, that really is like the film!" then here's the reason: maker Oblong Industrie—who dub G-Speak a "gesture-based interface with recombinant networking and real-world pixels"...wowsers—was partly founded by one of the film's science advisers. There's just one question, really: when can we have one? [Engadget via Gizmowatch]

Six Real Gadgets Minority Report Predicted Correctly

By Brian X. Chen

The future-predicting technology that drives the premise of the sci-fi blockbuster Minority Report is silly at best. And when the film hit theaters in 2002, the gadgets seemed pretty unrealistic, too. But eerily enough the slew of dreamed-up gizmos showed off throughout John Anderton's daring escape are hardening into reality.

No, our government hasn't yet imprisoned a group of nude psychics to combat crime. But some of the latest over-the-top gadgets are making director Steven Spielberg and writer Philip Dick appear to be fortunetellers themselves — of the technology world, at least. Here's a list of some disturbing, or just plain cool tech teased in the movie that'll be hitting home in one form or another.

Gesture-based Computer Interfaces

A visually awesome, albeit seemingly impractical piece of tech that the film highlights is the 3-D-hologram computer interface that Anderton controls with graceful hand gestures. Mgestyk Technologies is playing off the same idea with its gesture-based interface, which consists of a 3-D camera and software that translates hand movements into commands to control computer applications and games. From looking at the demo video, the interface appears to be a bit laggy, but progress is progress.

Flexible Displays

Spielberg and Dick clearly aren't optimistic about the future of print, because in Report the medium is entirely replaced with thin, flexible electronic displays. Even better, the displays automatically update with the latest news articles, presumably from futuristic RSS feeds. Thanks to the United States' tendency to dump billions of dollars into military funding, we'll see a gadget just like that in about three years. Composed of specialty polymer and thin stainless-steel substrates, the screens will display characters with the electrophoretic ink (E-Ink) technology seen on today's e-book readers (e.g., the Amazon Kindle). Hopefully by then E-Ink will achieve color.

3-D Holograms

Probably the cheesiest scene in Report is the one where Anderton is watching a home video of his wife and pre-kidnapped son. But more interestingly, the video is projected as a 3-D hologram, making it appear as if his wife and son are standing right in front of him. CNN tried to recreate that effect with its recent election coverage. Granted, the anchors and reporters being videotaped weren't actually looking at holograms. Instead, they were looking at monitors, and CNN used 44 small, fixed cameras and 20 computers to insert virtual holograms with real-time effects processing. Fake holograms! Wait, that's kind of redundant, isn't it?

Identity-Detecting Advertisement Cameras

Surely you recall the scene in Report when Anderton is trying to run from the PoPo — but cameras keep scanning his eyeballs, only to play targeted advertisements based on his identity. A new display from NEC is creepily similar. Announced in July and premiering in Japan, NEC's display utilizes a miniature camera to detect a person's age and sex so it can play specific commercials aimed at a shopper's demographic. Don't get a black-market surgeon to remove your eyeballs just yet: Playing ads on a TV isn't nearly as invasive as the ubiquitous holograms in Report. But it's the same intrusive, identity-probing idea.

Robot Scouts

You would think the police in Report go a bit too far when they deploy creepy, crawly spiderbots to chase down Anderton. But there's no limit line for the U.S. military, which has a pretty similar idea: Robot teams that hunt down culprits, according to a story in The Register. The "Multi-Robot Support System" will consist of software and sensors to detect human presence indoors. A human operator will be able to control a team of three to five robots that will weigh up to 220 pounds each. Hum. that's actually a lot more terrifying than the scout bots in Report.

We couldn't find a picture of the Pentagon's robot scouts for the simple reason that they don't exist yet. So, until they do, you'll have to pretend the goofy, costumed nerds above are actually a small swarm of terrifying, human-hunting automatons.

Predicting Mistakes

We're nowhere near figuring out how to see into the future, but neuroscientists are devising a method to predict mistakes. The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences published a study where researchers recorded neurological patterns preceding careless errors. This could lead to a biofeedback system that helps us catch mistakes before making them. That's certainly more civil than throwing a group of test subjects into a tub and plugging them in.

Photos: Fox Movies, Mgestyk, CNN, Textually.org, Dan Coulter/Flickr happyvia/Flickr