We make money not art has this post about touchless screens
http://www.we-make-money-not-art.com/archives/006428.php
i was just at the Walker and saw a screen based interactive database
that was touchless. it featured some "floating" slides (like 35mm
transparencies) that you could "grab" to see an expanded view and more
info. it responded to the position of your hand as well as the state of
your figures coming together to "grab" the image.
anyone else seen this?
touchless screens
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Type: discussion
Comments
Ryan,
This is Eric from the Walker, thought i would share some info about
the table. What you saw was an installation called Dialog, its an
interactive table produced originally in response to a proposal
circulated in 2002. The table was made by Marek Walczak, Michael
McAllister and Jakub Segen with the interface design being completed
by Walker New Media staff (myself) and video shot by our media
department.
The table works a bit different than the link you posted. It is
loaded with infrared LEDs in the base and an camera mounted to the
ceiling above the table. The camera senses the shadow your hand casts
in the infrared light. I have some pictures on our blog of the table
being installed so you can see the inside of the base. This set up is
more similar to the eye-toy device for Playstation (http://
eyetoy.com/) than it is to a touch screen really. The link you posted
was short on specific details but it seemed to have an array of
motion sensors and not one large sensor (like a camera) putting it
all together. Multiple sensors like a touch screen with motion
sensors would allow you more accuracy but it would really depend on
how many sensors you have per inch (just like a touch screen). Our
interface only works with elements 1 inch square in size so our level
of interaction is necessarily course.
If the IC sensor based screen works the way the promise it would
solve a couple of problems we have run into mostly revolving around
the camera only being able to see your hand on a 2d plane. If a user
turns their hand toward the table to grasp an object the camera can
not see their grasping motion and therefore can't do any sort of
gesture recognition. We've noticed people generally figure out the
hand orientation after one or two tries or after watching the
instructional video we have next to the table. Unfortunately i don't
know a thing about IC-based sensors so i don't know if they can
really detect motions in full 3d, or what their latency is (if any)
or how fine of a grid can be made. Anyone else familiar with that
type of sensor?
We've done quite a bit of writing on the table and there was already
a website about it online
Info and pictures and concept: http://dialogtable.com/
Installation notes on our blog: http://blogs.walkerart.org/newmedia/
index.php?cat
The original proposal: http://dialog.walkerart.org/dialog.wac
If your further interested in the topic I know Jakub has done some
very involved writing on the subject, a lot of it is here (membership
required):
http://portal.acm.org/results.cfm?coll=portal&dl