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Touch Screen Tech Comes of Age 78

Posted by CmdrTaco from the hello-computer dept.
pottercw writes "Good summary of today's touch-screen technologies on Computerworld — the obvious Apple iPhone and Microsoft Surface, plus projected touch screens (nothing for users to break), handheld devices that you control from the back (so your fingers don't obscure the screen), and of course giant multitouch walls a la Minority Report. Anyone got $100K?"
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Touch Screen Tech Comes of Age More

Touch Screen Tech Comes of Age

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  • plus projected touch screens (nothing for users to break)

    I bet you with one permanent marker and a determination I could write "First Post" on every displayed image on a projected touchscreen.
    • So? The point is that anything you write could be covered up with masking tape or a layer of paint without compromising the functionality of the display. (Unless you write it backwards on the lens of the projector, which may not be accessible.)
      • Yes, because screens look just as good as new once you slap a fresh coat of pain on them, or alternatively, cover them in masking tape. A pen knife could do quite a bit of damage to most screens also.

        • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

          by Jeff DeMaagd ( 2015 )
          I really haven't seen a lot of that kind of vandalism. It seems like slashdotters are trying hard to find reasons when it wouldn't work when other display systems would have most of the same problems under the same circumstances.
          • I have. I worked for a high school IT dept, and the CAD lab/shop class computers had gouges taken out of the LCDs with X-acto knives, balsa sticks shoved into the fans, and all sorts of abuse that would make any IT dept want to throttle an entire class of miscreants.
      • The point the GP is making, I believe is ... never say never.
    • Plus, you could put postage stamps on all of your E-mail ;)
  • Unfortunately, projected touch screen doesn't mean the floating windows from Nadesico.
  • Geek Rejection Lines for Tomorrow:

    HEY! I am NOT an iPhone!

  • $100k? Try $40! (Score:5, Informative)

    by Roger W Moore ( 538166 ) on Saturday February 02, 2008 @01:33PM (#22274036) Journal
    I don't have $100k but I do have $40, a web browser and a basic knowledge of electronics. If you do too you might want to try this link [cmu.edu].

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Enleth ( 947766 )
      Since when does a Wii cost $40?

      • Re: (Score:1)

        by Xanius ( 955737 )
        You only need the remote, not the whole wii.

      • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

        by fictionpuss ( 1136565 ) *
        Since when does a Wii cost $40?

        It doesn't [google.com] - from the linked article: "NOTE: For most of these projects, you don't need the Nintendo Wii console. You only need the Wii controller and a bluetooth connection."

    • Re: (Score:1, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward
      I've tried it. While it makes for a cool mini-project, the final result isn't really good/accurate enough to be practical for a lot of the things you'd want a touchscreen for, even with perfect positioning of the wiimote, which takes some work to accomplish.
    • Ohh yes, that guy who found out that the wiimote exist.

      Well my personal favourite idea I want to do some research in is to build a huge "Rand-Tablet". Such a tablet is essentially a simplified Wacom tablet. You have a grid of thin wires behind your surface through which you run pulses or bursts of current. Your pen consists of a coil (perhaps with amplifier) which picks up the magnetic fields generated by the coils. Now as you know which wire is acticated when, you can simply measure the relative distances
  • Am I the only one that remembers the episode of "Beyond 2000" where there was a guy showing a CRT touch screen that could support three points of contact? This would have been somewhere in the range of 14-15 years ago. To say that putting this in a cellular phone is revolutionary like saying the same thing about VOIP. Sorry, it's evolutionary at best.
    • No you are not. I enjoyed Beyond2000 immensely, and it is interesting to remember some of the "cutting edge" technologies that they talked about and "future tech" that they proposed, and many of those have now been surpassed.

      We live in the future of yesteryear.
    • I used to watch that show a lot, but I don't remember a single story segment. The show is still available, under the name "Beyond Tomorrow" on the Discovery & Discovery Science Channel. Sometimes they provide updates and show parts of a previous story on a given company that ran on B2000. Beyond Tomorrow is re-run quite a bit, I don't remember seeing a new episode in several months if not longer.
    • Well, when you get to the basics, multitouch isn't revolutionary at all, just an aswer to an obvious limitation of previous designs. What makes a certain technology revolutionary is almost just as much about the implementation than about anything else. As it is, three points of contact on a 17'' desktop CRT doesn't make much sense, but on an iPhone, yes please.
      There isn't any spectacular technology in a Wii either, but putting different sensors in a handheld device and creating a platform on for mainstream
    • Comment removed based on user account deletion
  • For your curiosity, Google also has tentacules in touch screen technology through touchEarth [blogspot.com]. AFAIK, this is in Google's SoC and work is mostly open source related. (for the most interested in virtual globes touch screens, see this link [slashgeo.org])
    • My colleague and co-founder of NUI Group, Pawel Solyga, developed Opentouch (c++), for Google Summer of Code. This multitouch solution library is partly open source and partly NUI inhouse software. touchEarth is solely NUI inhouse software. Touchlib (c++) was originally started by NUI Group co-founder David Wallin and further developed by the NUI Group community. Whereas TouchAPI (Flash) was mostly put together by colleague Christian Moore, also co-founder of NUI Group. More info at http://www.multitouch [multitouch.nl]

  • JCL5M for the win. (Score:4, Insightful)

    by pcgabe ( 712924 ) on Saturday February 02, 2008 @02:05PM (#22274272) Homepage Journal

    Anyone got $100K?
    Anyone who has watched Johnny Chung Lee's videos [youtube.com] knows that you don't need $100k. You just need a wiimote and a little brainmuscle. ^_^
    • Yeah, and I bought an add-on touch screen for my laptop for all of $200 or so. I like Lee's work but it's not accurate enough for me to be able to use any apps where they'd be relevant to me, like Maya or Photoshop.

  • Unbreakable? (Score:1, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Yeah, sure, just like the Titanic is unsinkable.
    I've lost count of all the broken ATM touch screens I've found.

    Plus touch screens are NOT handicapped-friendly.

    Furthermore, I LIKE tactile feedback. Real buttons are simply more fun to use.

    Finally, the Microsoft table scares the living crud out of me. It can read credit cards strewn on top of it. (And you just know someday that technology could be upgraded to read fingerprints or faces, too.) Some technologies just should NOT be allowed to develop.

    • Plus touch screens are NOT handicapped-friendly.

      That actually depends on the handicap.

      Furthermore, I LIKE tactile feedback. Real buttons are simply more fun to use.

      This is very true. If you remember typing class (if they still have it, you are not supposed to look at the keyboard when you type. In the days of computers when there was decent keyboards, people (I still use) buy Northgate keyboards with a good solid feel to them.

      The key to touchscreen is not the touchscreen itself, but the software. It gives t

  • As far back as I can remember....doing computer stuff I wanted touch screens, not everything needs to be touch screen, but with a phone it makes complete sense. It would also work extremely well for a universal remote, and then when something new comes out like blue ray, you can select the blue ray device on you completely touch screen remote (or even have the touchscreen phone double as your remote) but panel in the car could also be a touch screen. The only hold back we have is doing it right. The voyag
    • It would also work extremely well for a universal remote

      Try looking at AMX or other similar controllers [amx.com] They are just dumb touch screens for the most part, and require a "controller" in the cabinet with all your equipment, but they give you IR emmitters and serial ports to control most devices, along with Video switchers, scalers, etc. Many models also have an ethernet port, so you can access them remotely, or chain them together. They program with a language that I think is "objective C" which is about t
    • not everything needs to be touch screen, but with a phone it makes complete sense. It would also work extremely well for a universal remote,

      Not necessarily. I can manipulate my remote without looking at it. Feel of the buttons. If it were a flat plate touch screen, could I do the same? Maybe, but it would take a long, long time to train my fingers/hand to find that exact 3/4" x 1/4" space for the volume up and down. Same with the phone. I don't play with my phone enough, but I can't imagine a touch screen
      • The interface should not require you a go through a whole song and dance in order to accomplish something.

        When you walk, what is the interface to your legs?

        Now "that's" what an interface should do.
        • When you walk, what is the interface to your legs?

          Your nervous system. Are you suggesting brain control for all these devices?

          Now "that's" what an interface should do.

          Sure. Just wait a couple million years for it to develop and fine tune.
          • about neuroplasticity. :-)

            Read:

            "Society of Mind"
            by "Marvin Minsky"
            ISBN: 978-0671657130

            "The Stuff of Thought"
            by" "Steven Pinker"
            ISBN: 978-0-670-06327-7

            "The Body Has a Mind of Its Own"
            by: "Sandra Blakeslee and Matthew Blakeslee"
            ISBN: 978-1-4000-6469-4

            "The Mind & The Brain"
            by "Jeffrey M. Schwartz and Sharon Begley"
            ISBN: 978-0-06-098847-0

            "The Brain That Changes Itself:
            Stories of Personal Triumph from the Frontiers of Brain Science"
  • Nokia 770, N800 and N810. Just google them. N800 and N810 now have actually finger-usable interface (needs polishing, many little things still require stylus. Surfing does not).
  • While i love the idea of touchscreens the consensus is that people are just too lazy to use them on anything bigger than a phone, perhaps a UMPC.
    When i get the time i intend to use some weird compiz stuff + wiimote + hand gestures, but i realize while it will look cool to start with, ill probably go back to WIMP, because it takes a lot less effort.( Once i get board i may keep it alongside normal controls because im the kind of user who has 3 ways to do everything ). I see touchscreens as being in a similar
    • I don't think touchscreens will be a good idea on all desktops. Still, I think I would use it a lot. I would probably want the screen to be at a 15 degree tilt from horizontal, rather than vertical, then it would kind of work in a manner reminiscent of drafting tables.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by shmlco ( 594907 )
        Touch PADS, however, are a different story. Apple is busy building multi-touch guestures into its product line, including the iPhone, the Touch, and the Air, with rudimentary support in the MacBooks and the MacBook Pro (two fingered scrolling).

        It's only a matter of time before it hits the desktop [isights.org].

        While not touch "screens", a lot of the same kind of manipulations are possible, with the added advantage that you have a place to rest your arms while you work, and that you're not continually cleaning fingerprint

  • please....MS Surface is not touch (Score:3, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday February 02, 2008 @02:41PM (#22274594)
    "the obvious Apple iPhone and Microsoft Surface

    Once again - MS Surface has nothing to do with touching. There are 7 cameras below the glass that track and feed movement. The glass is the point reference and is not configured to detect or relay any physical content. It's just a big ass table [youtube.com] with old tech stuffed inside.

    So many punsters read so many reviews of tech products and believe so much MS hype without paying attention to what they are reading. MS seems to rely on that, by the way, and what a business model that must be in detail :)
    • Once again - MS Surface has nothing to do with touching. There are 7 cameras below the glass that track and feed movement.

      To the user, the difference is irrelevant. As long as it works, I don't care whether the surface recognizes my finger motion, or a camera array does.

    • Re:please....MS Surface is not touch (Score:5, Interesting)

      by westlake ( 615356 ) on Saturday February 02, 2008 @06:05PM (#22276440)
      Surface has nothing to do with touching. There are 7 cameras below the glass that track and feed movement. The glass is the point reference and is not configured to detect or relay any physical content. It's just a big ass table with old tech stuffed inside.

      Surface can take the punishment of the game room or bar.

      It might be possible replace a damaged table top with a cut glass sheet or plastic panel purchased from Home Depot.

      The use of rear projection suggests that it should at least be relatively simple and cheap to scale Surface to any arbitrary size or shape, for vertical or horizontal mounting.

      Surface can read codes stamped into objects. Glasses. Cameras. Game pieces. Surface can communicate with objects - perhaps over a Bluetooth link or something faster.

      Surface seem to do most of its work in software. I can't see any objection to using simple, reliable, off the shelf hardware.

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by MobileTatsu-NJG ( 946591 )

      Once again - MS Surface has nothing to do with touching.
      Except for the minor detail that it reacts when you 'touch' the glass.

  • Amalgam (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Ethanol-fueled ( 1125189 ) * on Saturday February 02, 2008 @03:02PM (#22274792) Homepage Journal
    I can't wait until they combine one of these [google.com] with one of these [wikipedia.org] and get this [powerhousemuseum.com]. A patent abstract is here [patentstorm.us].
    • People, stop asking for minority report screens already. Think about how much time you spend in front of your computer. Now imagine what it would feel like if during all that time, your arms were raised in front of your face.

      Not very comfortable, is it?

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Tmack ( 593755 )

        People, stop asking for minority report screens already.

        That particular shot was acutally from the Matrix trillogy...

        Think about how much time you spend in front of your computer. Now imagine what it would feel like if during all that time, your arms were raised in front of your face.

        Not very comfortable, is it?

        Because we have become lazy, sitting still all day, barely moving our fingers to do all our work. Actually, these types of interfaces would work much better in some cases than others, so I dont think using them would mean using them with nothing else, just as an addition to a mouse/keyboard. More like how a drafting tablet assists artists/engineers/draftsmen by giving mapped coordinate input and menus for specific applications while the mouse i

      • Don't think that they would have to be fixed in the vertical position. Swivel it down to the horizontal if that's more comfortable.

        And don't think that you can have only one. I'd want one displaying a keyboard, projecting just above my beltline and in a mostly horizontal position, for typing. But for mousing I'd want to poke at and drag things in the main vertical display.

  • Touch Feedback? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Doc Ruby ( 173196 ) on Saturday February 02, 2008 @03:16PM (#22274910) Homepage Journal
    Anyone got a touchscreen surface covered in something that can feed back directly to the touching fingertips? Like a memory plastic which can raise bumps and ridges around the "GUI", so fingertips can easily tell widget boundaries and tell them apart?

    Is there some dynamic Braille surface that could be made transparent to do this for everyone? We're all blind behind our fingertips blocking the screen.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by shmlco ( 594907 )
      You could make a pressure-sensitive keyboard screen that had the little "home" ridges in the right spots to help things out, but I'm not sure that's enough. (Have to be pressure-sensitive so that you can rest your fingers on the keys without typing.)
      • Sure, but what I'm talking about is a completely dynamic surface (with some resolution probably much lower than the display) that would bump up raised points and edges to match whatever GUI is displayed. If it were really good, it would also allow dragging, with the texture following the drag. That's why I mentioned memory plastic.
        • Well there go my millions, but you can use particular liquids, that can bump out according to a voltage applied to them. it would be fairly easy to build a mat that confined the liquid into blobs so thin you couldn't see them when off, but big enough to touch when on. OFC the surface would be soft but aslong as suitable graphical effects were used users would assume it was by design not by limitation
          • Whoa, that sounds really cool and doable. What are these particular liquids called? Or are they really just called "particular liquids"?
            • With an ultrasonic speaker you could do it with corn starch [google.com].
              • Well, that looks like it takes a lot of energy. And I'm not sure what effect the ultrasonics would have on the rest of the device.

                But it is cool. There's just got to be a bistable state achievable with it to be practical for this application.
            • the process is called electro wetting, i did a short report on it a year ago so dont have much detailed information. ATM the main area of research is in producing liquid lenses.
              apparently the molecules used are alkane-thiol molecules that have been eletroatcively terminated, but as a i dont do organic chemistry anymore that does mean much to me.
              unfortunately all my work was limited to applications as a moving partless lense, but i see no reason it can be used witha siutably thin plastic coating to produce a
              • Do you think that a layer of electrodes in a grid of say 0.1mm cells could raise the dots 0.1mm (or higher) under a sheet, and still permit light to pass when flat, and inductance to change with the fingertip (light doesn't have to pass when raised, but that would be nice). Or maybe some lower resolution? Can the electrodes cycle the raised/flat state fairly quickly (eg. 10Hz or faster)? Is this stuff cheap to mass produce with relatively few defects?

                I see this stuff working a lot like LCDs, which have all
                • Im not sure its still being developed, the cycle rate would be as fast as the transistor can turn on/off so 100hz is possible.
                  The materials would be cheap but the manufacturing process would be quite expensive.
                  Visible light can pass through the substance, although with the liquid they were testing it would be lenses a bit, however if the resolution was high enough or a liquid with a different density was found it wouldn't be noticeable.
                  Not sure about the touchscreen im not sure how they work tbh.
                  sounds poss
                  • The touchscreens mentioned in this Slashdot story don't detect pressure per se, they detect the inductance change on the screen when a finger touches it. Would the voltages in these pockets interfere with those dynamics?
                    • yeah i think so, so they couldnt be used together without, a significant CPU hit to compensate (shame it seamed like a cool idea))
                    • Unless there's a way to sense the inductance on the thin elastic top layer, protected from inductance changes in the expandable layer.

                      And there's also ultrasonic touch sensors, though I think they're not so good at multiple touchpoints, and would also probably have refraction problems through the raised features.

                      But it's cool enough to keep investigating it.

  • GPC vs Embedded device (Score:4, Insightful)

    by fermion ( 181285 ) on Saturday February 02, 2008 @03:27PM (#22275010) Homepage Journal
    First the touch screen as the user for embedded devices, like phones, gas pumps, store check out registers, has long been established. These devices serve limited well defined purposes, can be sold at high enough prices to support the hardware and integration engineering,

    Second, just because one as a touch screen does not mean on does not have a WIMP. This is such a basic flaw in the article, that I stopped reading TFA. In the simples case, the Pointer is the touch part of the screen. In more extreme cases, the menu structure may be simplified to pre-WIMP norms, though in most cases such menus will be based on configurable icons, not text. This does not, however, mean that the menu does not exist.

    What we have been seeing lately, and what does exist on the general purpose computer, like a Mac or x86 running an MS OS, is the point taking on additional functionality, such as scrolling, zooming, etc. The complexity of completing such tasks vary. On the Apple, touch pads used gestures to scroll while an HP might have a dedicated part of the touch pad scroll. IN particular, Apple did not import the functionality of the iPhone as a touch screen application, but as a touch pad enhancement, an enhancement that appears to be mostly hardware related.

    The question we have to ask is do we want our screen to be both out input and output device. For compact integrate devices like phones there is some advantage. But for a GPC, is there an advantage over a mouse, or even the command line? Mice are very efficient at moving quickly over large screen real estate, and can be very precise. Mice can be more efficient at moving through large documents than even the command line. Do I think I can edit this document faster if I had to touch the screen to move around? I don't think so.

    Touch screens will continue to proliferate as interfaces to embedded devices. If they get cheaper, they will added on as a gee whiz accessory, just like the 238 USB ports and memory card readers and even floppy drives Re now added just so the feature list does not look so inferior. But it will still be a WIMP interface.

  • I don't think so (Score:3)

    by nguy ( 1207026 ) on Saturday February 02, 2008 @04:25PM (#22275458)
    Touch screens with vertical surfaces are unusable for routine work (they're OK for ATMs) because arms get tired. Touch screens with horizontal surfaces take up valuable desktop space unnecessarily and appear to cause neck and back problems.

    Touch screens have been around essentially as long as mice. Mice won because they work incredibly well; no other pointing device even comes close.

  • RSI worse with touchscreens? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by gilesjuk ( 604902 ) <<giles.jones> <at> <zen.co.uk>> on Saturday February 02, 2008 @05:51PM (#22276296)
    Mice and keyboards get blamed for RSI, touch screens will be worse is the software isn't designed for it.

    For example, dragging things around on a touch screen puts more strain on your fingers and requires 1:1 movement.

    Few people have 1:1 mapping on their mouse, that is the distance moved by the mouse directly equates to the distance the cursor moves on screen.

    Moving your arms around a large touch screen will soon become tiring.

    • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Velocir ( 851555 )
      I'm willing to bet you won't have to maintain contact the whole time, even when dragging things (highlight item with left hand, touch destination with right hand: zero arm movement). Besides which, a little added physical exertion will be a good thing for many computer users...
  • The big problem with touch screens is Gorilla Arm [faqs.org],

    After more than a very few selections, the arm begins to feel sore, cramped, and oversized -- the operator looks like a gorilla while using the touch screen and feels like one afterwards.

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