Microsoft's Multitouch Coffee Table Display

longacre writes "Popular Mechanics takes the Microsoft Surface system for a hands-on video test drive. To be announced at today's D5 conference, the coffee-table-esqe device allows manipulation from multiple touch points, while infrared, WiFi and Bluetooth team up to allow wireless transfers between devices placed on top of it, such as cameras and cell phones. Expected to launch before the end of the year in the $5,000-$10,000 range, the devices might not make their way under many Christmas trees, but will find the insides of Starwood hotels, Harrah's casinos and T-Mobile shops."

Similar tech

[TequilaMonster]

There were some videos a while back of a similar system being demo'd. It showed a system which allowed for multiple simultaneous touches to be detected, so you could actually grab a photograph and resize it by pulling the corners. You could give commands by chording touches on the screen. It looked really interesting, but I can't find it anymore - anybody know where I can find them again?

Re:Similar tech

[Steve--Balllmer]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PLhMVNdplJc [youtube.com]

Re:Similar tech

[yakumo.unr]

Yes that video was Jeff Han (also featured in the video in TFA) demoing his display a year or two ago.

Re:Similar tech

[Verteiron]

http://cs.nyu.edu/~jhan/ftirsense/ [nyu.edu]

There ya go.

And there was yet another that allowed you to mix music and create synthesized effects in real time by arranging various oddly-shaped prisms on the surface. I have two (large) videos of that but I don't know where they came from.

Re:Kudos

[Morky]

Jeff Han might disagree.

Conception

[simpl3x]

It is just about nine months since: http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/view/id/65 [ted.com]

But like rearing a child, we'll see the person in 5 to seven years... Or, in a month when the iPhone is released.

Re:Similar tech

[tom17]

These maybe? (Rather than the jeff Han one)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zp-y3ZNaCqs [youtube.com]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1yHB40jeTOw [youtube.com]

Re:Credit where due department (Yeah To Jeff Han)

[Pontiac]

This was exciting and appeared to work much better when I saw it for the first time last year.
Check out the Jeff Han video from last year then watch the MS video.. The original is a much smoother interface.
http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/view/id/65 [ted.com]

Yeah MS added some fluff by making it interact with devices placed on top the the basic idea is not some new "Top Secret" project

Hisory of Multitouch Interface

[bjunee]

http://www.billbuxton.com/multitouchOverview.html [billbuxton.com]

Reactable

[the grace of R'hllor]

You seem to be thinking of Reactable [upf.edu]. The main difference is that Reactable uses a camera and fiducial symbols. Reactable is really a great and low-cost system, which works fairly well (just sketching one of the symbols with marker got it recognizable). They've segregated the optical processing and the application layer very well from what I could tell, which should lead to clean and easy apps.

MS appears to be using a combination, as the guy showed some optical symbols on the bottom of objects as well.

Tron?

[Alzheimers]

In Tron, didn't the CEO guy have the display built into his office desk, with a recessed membrane-style keyboard?

Granted it only displayed VT-100, but it was still the first example I remember of a useful PC built into the furniture.

(yes, those old coctail arcade machines were cool (especially tennis) but I don't consider them a "PC")

Re:Expect Apple to unleash the Legal Nazgul

[CrackedButter]

There is more than one way to implement a solution, just because this is similar to what Fingerworks did doesn't mean they are infringing on patents. I do believe Jeff Han was developing this (for a while) at the same time as Apple were putting the technology into a phone.

Re: Microsoft's Multitouch Coffee Table Display

[TheRagingTowel]

Wow. Microsoft invented the touch screen. I'm impressed. What's next, a pointing device that you can slide around and click things with?

Wiseass, this is a MULTI-POINT touch screen. This is a totally different approach than current touch-screens. More (amazing!) demonstrations of this concept here [nyu.edu].

Re:Other Articles

[electron_plumber]

MERL's DiamondTouch has been on sale for over a year! Not only is it a large multitouch interface, it's the only one that can tell who is touching where! (That's kind of critical if you want to let people use different tools at the same time.) Check out http://youtube.com/watch?v=t35HXAjNW6s [youtube.com] for a video of DT in action..

Re: Microsoft's Multitouch Coffee Table Display

[NatasRevol]

Or here...

http://www.apple.com/iphone/technology/ [apple.com]

Re:Credit where due department

[tshak]

Oh Cripes, throw me a technology idea that no one else has thought of first.

Exactly. Everyone should go read The Myths Of Innovation [oreilly.com] (O'Reilly) before making comments about innovation.

Re:Kudos

[DustyShadow]

Yea this stuff has been around for years: http://www.touchtable.com/site/index.php [touchtable.com] http://www.ms.northropgrumman.com/touchtable/ [northropgrumman.com] http://www.military.com/soldiertech/0,14632,Soldie rtech_TouchTable,,00.html [military.com] http://www.merl.com/projects/DiamondTouch/ [merl.com] The Mitsubishi one can recognize multiple users. I've used it and it's pretty cool. Touch tables are nothing new but it would be cool to see Microsoft start marketing this to consumers.

Re: Microsoft's Multitouch Coffee Table Display

[blincoln]

The Coffee table uses infra-red sensors. What happens you place a a cup of hot coffee on the coffee table? what happens when you spill some? Will the coffee flowing over the table set off a touch sensor?

MS' interactive displays use near IR, not thermal IR. Probably because:

1 - NIR gear is incredibly cheap, whereas thermal IR gear is still very pricey.
2 - There are lots of materials that are transparent to NIR but translucent to visible light. Their displays have a NIR camera and an NIR LED array in addition to the video projector behind the projection surface, which the NIR light passes through in both directions. The user sees the visible light on the projection surface, and the system sees the user. AFAIK material that would work like that for thermal IR is more exotic.

Anyway, coffee would probably look transparent enough to the camera to not register a hit. But even if it did, the video shows little CGI bubbles moving away from the cup set on the table, so I'm sure they've thought of this kind of thing.

Re:Credit where due department

[jmichaelg]

I think the objection is to Microsoft claiming the invention i.e. "Microsoft Surface". The first speaker in the video says "it's the first of its kind..." which is simply not true.

  TED [ted.com], where I first saw the photo enlarging/spinningidea shown, isn't an obscure venue. The idea of putting objects on a touch surface and having them interact I believe was Reactable's [youtube.com] The Reactable interface showed up at a Bjork concert. Again, not an obscure venue.

What tweaks a lot of people isn't that ideas evolve but that Microsoft gloms onto them and then claims they came up with the idea and patent it. Microsoft deserves credit for bringing the ideas to market in a different guise but not for innovating.

A little more background

[The Notorious ASP]

Check out the demonstrations of TouchLight and PlayAnywhere on Andy Wilson's blog: http://research.microsoft.com/~awilson/default.htm l [microsoft.com] - he's been working on this for quite some time. As I understand it, the surface itself is not a touch screen like in a PDA - the images from the camera are processed to perceive depth and detect a touch when all captured images reach a certain point of intersection. Instead of only detecting a physical touch, the screen can also detect as your hand (or whatever) moves closer or further away from the screen.

Re:Better applications

[Anonymous Coward]

There already is a DJ console based on this technology [jazzmutant.com].