Touchless, iTable and Surface
One of many innovate products created by Microsoft is the Surface. Having had the fortunate experience of playing with a Surface machine it goes without saying that it is superb. The multi-touch capabilities make this an engaging and compelling experience for everyone using it.
On more research of the Surface I found that box consists of cameras inside facing upwards onto the glass. These cameras detect shadows/images on the glass and then can work out your movement.
This gave me an idea, it would be wonderful if using just a web cam I could create the same effect. So… I decided to do some live searching and found an SDK that already that allows me to do this, it was called Touchless.
They already provide a demo application that will allow you to have a play around, I ended up playing the classic game of Pong with my flatmate. The experience was smooth and quite good fun. Touchless doesn’t use a glass table but allows you interact with your software in midair just with hand gestures. Similar to what is show in the film Minority Report.
The downside to this application is that it requires markers to monitor movement. So we ended up using bright red towels as the markers and then the application was able to monitor their movement. It works very much like a green screen, so this means it won’t work with your hands as the application sometimes thinks your face is an marker as well and gets all confused. May a bright coloured glove would work?
I thought I would do some more live searching on Surface and then found something called iTable. Contrary to it’s name, it’s not an Apple product nor does it run OS X. In fact it’s running Windows XP. This is basically a touch screen with multi-touch, described as a big iPod Touch/iPhone, maybe where the name iTable originated from. The video on the site shows some cool things like multi-touch World of War craft.
Does this mean that Surface is now obsolete in a market where multi-touch can be created with a simple use of a web cam? or even a cheaper alternative touch screen?.
The answer is definitely no.
Surface still has a lot more on offer than what is currently out there on the market.
Firstly, of all the technologies above Surface is the only that allows you to detect the position of the hand as it records shadows it can work out which way a person is facing.
The surface also has rotation, so unlike the others the user could be sitting around the table and the UI would adjust according which you would not get from the iTable, you’re not likely to use the Touchless stuff upside down.
Surface also has a neat trick of using byte patterns that allow you to tag items, this was demonstrated with the demo of wines which is a perfect example of where they tag a bottle of wine. This allows them to work out what you’ve ordered and add it to your bill, make recommendations on what else you might like, or even being able to tag your credit card and therefore the bar would always make sure they have your wine in stock, loyalty points, the possibilities are endless…
Surface has Bluetooth technology that makes sending information via smart phones, digital cameras a breeze. In fact with a home server as well the table could become even more powerful taking data from a streaming source. The concierge service on the Surface allows you to plan your day using Virtual Earth and other services and then uploads that information to your mobile device so your calendar and all the details are stored on your phone ready for you go.
I think with all this under the hood it still makes Surface a market leader.
