Samsung Galaxy Glass Patent Plans To Turn Fingers Into a Keyboard

rjmarvin writes "Samsung looks to have found a way around voice commands for smart glasses by projecting an augmented reality keyboard onto users' hands. Galaxy Glass wearers' thumbs are used as input devices, tapping different areas of their fingers where various keys are virtually mapped. According to the August 2013 patent filing with the WIPO and South Korea's Intellectual Property Office, Samsung states that voice controls are too imprecise a technology, which are too heavily impacted by the noise levels of the surrounding environment."

How about glass that doesn't break within 3 months

[ackthpt]

I find typing on a flat surface doesn't work, as my fingers are curiously all of different lengths.

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[ackthpt]

That's clumsy oaf, to you, nurb.

Samsung's Gorilla Glass is about 1/3 the thickness of the glass from an iPhone 4s (I have samples on my desk in front of me) While it's nice to have light weight and slim form factors, there's a lot to be said for glass which doesn't break easily. The aftermarket for fake Galaxy glass is considerable - which must mean I'm not the only clumsy oaf out there. My phone is now ensconced in an Otterbox Defender as having it all it one piece is preferable to a handful of broken

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[nurb432]

Only serves to increase my general disgust with mankind.

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[hermitdev]

I've dropped my G1 & G2 onto concrete, and the most they received is scratches (and the battery compartment popping open & tossing the battery). I've dropped my Galaxy S3 on the bathroom tile, and it only has a small scratch on the peripheral of the front glass. All of these have occurred from chest height (and I'm 6' tall). What are you doing to your phone that you are constantly breaking the glass? The S3 is the first I've ever but a protector on, and mostly because I put an extended battery in th

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[thegarbz]

You're right! You're not the only clumsy oaf out there.

Sorry but that's the simple truth. If you can't look after your phone then put it in a case like you already have or buy a durable one. The thin form the of the Galaxy S series is in my opinion one of its best features and given how I've yet to break a phone (all of mine have scratches, dings, and bits of paint missing but otherwise still work) I have not problem with Samsung removing some of that wasteful 2/3rds of useless glass.

Oh and the aftermarket

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[psyclone]

That's amazing you survived with the phone in your pocket!

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[Lodlaiden]

I find typing on a flat surface doesn't work, as my fingers are curiously all of different lengths.

Of course your fingers are longer in the middle. How else are you supposed to reach the 3 & 8 keys?

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[bob_super]

try typing on your fingers using your thumb... that's gonna make carpal tunnel syndrome look like a day at the beach!

It reminds me of the attempt to replace mice with gestures: cute thirty seconds, painful in under an hour.

Mind Reading

[wjcofkc]

I wonder how long before we accept that we will have to wear batteries to power the MRI that reads out brainwaves and turns them into text. It will happen.

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[ozmanjusri]

I wonder how long before we accept that we will have to wear batteries to power the MRI that reads out brainwaves and turns them into text. It will happen.

Why wait?

https://www.kickstarter.com/pr... [kickstarter.com]

Typing or Tuning in Tokyo???

[Chad Smith]

Mommy what is that man doing with his hands?

Prior Art?

[Gryle]

I've seen laser projection keyboards for many years. Can someone with some technical know-how tell me why this isn't prior art?

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[ackthpt]

Sorry, but ST:TNG has informed me people will still be typing on solid surfaces, over 300 years from now.

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[Anubis IV]

True, but we know from ST:DS9 that they'll switch over to holographic interfaces sometime in the late 2300s or early 2400s (or, at least they did in a future timeline in one episode [memory-alpha.org]).

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[ProzacPatient]

Mass Effect says otherwise I think.

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[Lodlaiden]

Yes, but the buttons will be 4 times the size of current keys and not have any text on them.

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[Belial6]

To be fair, their computers will have fully functional voice recognition systems that will be able to do anything the touch system can do. The touch systems will be for 'open floorplan' work spaces where people would be talking over each other, places where you want the data is at least somewhat confidential, and places that you just don't want the noise of people talking.

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[The Grim Reefer]

Square block of stone + rounded corners = Completely new thing humanity never would have dreamed of...

every invention can be boiled down to putting together well understood parts.

That's a pretty silly statement, as most every book written is simply an amalgam of understood words. A CPU is simply a bunch of transistors arranged in a slightly different configuration and/or size. Hell you and I are virtually identical chemically. 98.8% of our elemental composition is a mix of carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, oxygen, phosphorus, sulfur, calcium, potassium, sodium and chlorine. Actually 96%, or more, of the composition of damn near every known living critter is the first 6 elements I mention

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[John_3000]

He told you: square block, rounded corners

And geez, Samsung, you could be doing so much better: chordite.com

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[The Grim Reefer]

He told you: square block, rounded corners

So you're saying that Apple has a patent on the wheel? Meh. It wouldn't surprise me.

Re:Prior Art?

[Verdatum]

Projecting specifically onto the fingers in the realm of augmented reality, thus requiring tracking the fingers' position as they move, and then gauging when each portion of the fingers is touched for the sake of alphanumeric input is a specific innovation. And it certainly extends beyond laser projected keyboards.

It is at least a kinda clever idea, unlike many patents we hear about on /.

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[Rob Y.]

Fair enough. I would at least hope, though, that the finger tap combinations that correspond to an alphabet in this invention are not themselves patentable. It's one thing to patent the input mechanism, but an entirely different thing to patent the input itself. Imagine a world where millions learned to 'type' this way, and somebody came up with another mechanism for processing finger taps that didn't infringe Samsung's mechanism. There'd be a huge barrier to adoption if everybody had to learn a new alp

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[Anonymous Coward]

It is not a case of prior art for the same reason as it is not a banana. It is not a laser projection keyboard. You did not read the article.

Re:Prior Art?

[ljw1004]

I can. Here's the first step. (1) ignore the slashdot summary. (2) read the "CLAIMS" section of the patent. (3) then post about it.

In this case, what's being claimed is not a laser, is not a projection, and is arguably not even a keyboard.

Different prior art: finger counting

[DrYak]

Two things mentioned by others:
- The device is NOT projecting a virtual keyboard with a laser that you can tap with your fingers.
Instead, it lets you use *YOUR* finger as a keyboard and you tap them with your thumbs.
- "Projection" is a poor choice of a word. What the device do, is that it superposes a visual aid on the glasses' HUD to help with the tapping. But you're basically tapping your thumb against your fingers (the glass just puts some labels as augmented reality to help you).

So you see that this patent has absolutely nothing to do with virtual keyboard.

Instead, it's got a much more older prior art:
This way of data input is *VERY* closely related to ancient for of finger-counting in base 12 (probably has been used historically in most culture which count in "dozens") where you count phallanges with your thumb.

According to Wikipedia: apperently this method is still used around in Asia, so no surprise that a korean company is trying to turn it into a data input method.

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[Gryle]

Ah, okay, that makes more sense. I read the article but not the patent filing. Thanks for making me less ignorant.

Re: Prior Art?

[Paul Klapperich]

Click the link and look at the picture if you're too lazy to even read any of it... The projected keyboards project onto the desk and you type as the keyboard were built into the desk. With this, the keyboard is superimposed on your fingers and you tap different parts of your finger with your thumb to signify different letters, not unlike the old T9 texting on flip phones. The drawing in the article shows which part of your finger had which letters.

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[Nexus7]

In other words, you can use your phone "hands-free" which driving, but not really hands-free.

The next level of odd

[e_armadillo]

Before cell phones people walking around and talking to themselves stood out as probably unstable. But now, not so much.

Will we soon see people walking around, talking to themselves, and fidgeting in the air and think nothing of it?

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[Lodlaiden]

Already do.

QWERTY keyboard

[MildlyTangy]

While they are at it, can they fix the slow-by-design QWERTY keyboard layout and come up with something to make finger key input as fast,efficient and easy to use as possible?

This is the 21st century, we shouldn't be slowed down by the limitations of the mechanical typewriter.

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[mythosaz]

Well, it's Android, so try MessagEase [google.com] or a Dvorak keyboard [google.com], or any of a hundred others.

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[Belial6]

I've come to the conclusion that we are past the point of that being necessary. I don't consider myself a great typist. Decent, but not great. When I am in practice, I can accurately type 65 wpm. In the real world, I doubt I average 45 words a minute, as there are other factors than the physical act of typing that slow me down below the 65 wpm mark.

Ambient noise does not have to be a problem

[willy_me]

Multiple microphones can be used to triangulate the different sources of incoming noise. Some intelligent filters that take into account the expected 3D position of the speaker can then be used to filter out ambient noise. Cell phones are already doing this - at least the good ones are. This is why the iPhone has multiple microphones. I imagine Samsung is doing something similar. You can learn more and see some impressive examples in the Stanford on-line artificial intelligence lectures. I believe the

Ugh

[FuzzNugget]

How does nobody seem to understand that any good input interface requires tactile feedback? We are truly in the age of form over function. God help us.

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[Anonymous Coward]

How much more tactile do you need than physically touching your own hand?

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[Neil Boekend]

Not everyone feels that way. I type better on Swiftkey than on a real keyboard (admittedly, I type real crappy on a normal keyboard). This is because swiftkey (and probably many other soft keyboards) correct a lot of my typing. It isn't perfect (it has the nasty habit of placing spaces in bb code and HTML, for example) but it is better than a normal keyboard.

Besides that, most people feel a real keyboard just takes up to much space. A phone is not meant to program the next OS or write a book. It is a w

Doesn't Seem Feasible

[organgtool]

This technology could be useful when you need privacy, like when you just have to talk shit on someone who is in the same room as you, but you can't dictate the message out loud. But for the most part, this seems like a highly inefficient form of input and is probably just a spaghetti-against-the-wall submarine patent in the event that someone else implements the feature and it takes off.

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[Sepodati]

Assuming you're the #13 AC there, what you wrote doesn't even come close to what's been described.

"They should come up with a hand held controller that lets you control it. The exact interface needs to be worked out but perhaps you can control it with your phone connected to it via bluetooth. You have a pointer/arrow that you see on the glass and you can hold the phone in your pocket and control it with your thumb."

There's no controller. Your hand just becomes a keypad to enter data.

Fin

[ArhcAngel]

I think Fin [indiegogo.com] has more potential.

Finally

[laddiebuck]

I think this is one of those technologies, like ebooks, or smartphones, that all geeks imagined in their heads growing up (at least, those who grew up before ebooks and virtual reality goggles with keyboards, etc.) - so I'm glad it's finally here! None of the ingredients are revolutionary, it just needs to happen.

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[Sepodati]

You've got a 3 x 4 grid to work with. The old keypad on phones naturally fits that. What layout of keys would you propose?

If they can do this, though, why don't they just overlay a QWERTY keyboard in the air and just do one or two finger hunt-and-peck recognition? Or maybe even a Swype style in the air. Add in some error correction / auto-correct and I think it'd be a whole lot better than a keypad on my fingers.

Men: iuknmljinjnjhlmmnmnjiup Ladies:ggg ggg gggggg

[abies]

Seen it on one of the forums discussing this technology.......

I forsee some issues

[RivenAleem]

"No Officer, I was trying to do ctrl-alt-delete."

Egg Shan vs Lo Pan!

[DaveV1.0]

Now we know how the wizards were controlling their magic warriors in Big Trouble in Little China!