Will Your Next Touchscreen Be Touchless?

forgot_my_username writes "The MIT Media Lab is developing a motion screen computer. It looks back at you. It measures light and gestures, and uses those to control the interface. 'Imagine every pixel on your LCD screen emitting light could also be receiving light,' said Ramesh Rakar, an Associate Professor at the Media Lab. They even mention the health benefits of not touching displays."

Re:I prefer my mouse.

[dingen]

The bandwith of 10 fingers is a lot higher than a mouse with just one pointer and a few buttons. You can potentially transmit a lot more instructions in a lot less time using your hands, if only we figured out a proper way to make it work.

This is the first step toward "eye focus" ads

[Culture20]

Get the public used to the idea of computer vision input for everyday tasks, and suddenly adware starts including drivers for the cameras (just in case you forgot to install the drivers yourself).
"People seem to keep looking at the upper right hand corner of the ad window. Move most of the content there, and the subliminal content to the bottom. Horizontal mirror image for Mac OS X and Ubuntu 10.4"

Re:I prefer my mouse.

[commodore64_love]

>>>The bandwith of 10 fingers is a lot higher than a mouse

You mean like a keyboard? Yeah they perfected that technology back in the 70s with TRS-80s (#1 computer at the time), Apple IIs, and Atari 400/800s which replaced previous toggle-switched computers with a 10-finger interface where you could type words directly on a CRT! (or TV). It was a great advancement in personal computers.

The problem with that 10-finger interface was the high learning curve which made people have to memorize all kinds of esoteric commands and key strokes, or constantly refer to a manual (Alt E == create text box in Word for DOS). The simplicity of the mouse was found to be better.

Re:this

[NitroWolf]

I wouldn't mind it being a camera, just for the simple fact that then I could video conference and have it look like I'm actually looking at the person, instead of the screen BELOW (or above) the camera.

Just wait...

[thijsh]

I've seen a concept of this once where the screen was what they called a 'surface camera' I think. The idea was that you can use it as webcam, input device but also as a scanner... you just put a piece of paper against your screen and you have an instant copy you can edit. And i can imagine they could also extend this with an infrared pen or something like that to create a touchscreen that can also be used as a high-resolution drawing tablet. Just wait until Wacom builds a screen with tech like this and people will go crazy for it.

Software solution

[gmuslera]

A webcam (or maybe 2 for 3d gesture recognition) is the only hardware device needed, no special hardware that senses with not very fine resolution where are your fingers and usually not with how much intensity are pressing. Think in Microsoft Surface, or better yet, in Sixth Sense technology. Moving the game to mostly software land gives a good potential for features, at least if cpu is enough.