Turn everything into a touchscreen with OmniTouch wearable device

The idea

A team of researchers at Microsoft Redmond Research has shaped up a groundbreaking wearable touchscreen technology, dubbed OmniTouch. In fact, it is a wearable device and can project a graphical user interface on any surface from your hand to wall. You can use the interface as a touchscreen the same way you use a smartphone’s touchscreen. As its moniker suggests, OmniTouch realizes omnipresence of touchscreen on any arbitrary surface instead of the crammed display of a phone or music player.

OmniTouch

Brainchild

Idea behind the innovative touchscreen technology is from a Microsoft Research internee and PhD scholar Chris Harrison and his team. Mr. Harrison explains that he and team have developed the method being an alternative to the mobile interaction that we are familiar today. It is a body-worn sensing system, which can project a graphical interface on any surface so that users can interact with the devices just touching on their own hand or table. The technology will work on all tremendous surface areas our daily life has, says Mr. Harrison.

The making

There have been long endeavors to develop the everywhere touchscreen technology. It has now been realized with this shoulder wearable device from Microsoft Research labs. The device will project interfaces on any arbitrary surfaces including walls, tables, books, notepads, hands, and others. Thanks to the sensors built into OmniTouch, your touches will be tracked for processing instantly. As a whole, what we get will be a complete touchscreen-like surface to send inputs to your devices with no delay and clutter.

What’s new

Efforts to develop the technology have been there for a long period from scientists. Researchers at Microsoft Research have almost reached the target. However, the project is not finished; it is only in prototype mode, which was put on display at the UIST 2011, 24th Symposium on User Interface Software and Technology by the Association for Computing Machinery in Santa Barbara, California last week. There should be more researches to turn OmniTouch to a completely reliable technology. As a result, in future we can use mobile phones quite well than we use today.

Depth-sensing camera

What’s refreshing

The very philosophy behind OmniTouch was to develop a method to help mobile users turn any surface into a touchscreen. To shape it up, the researchers deployed a shoulder mounted pico and a Kinect-like depth of sensor. On tracking your touches from any surfaces, the sensors will send them to the processing unit of the device that you have to wear in shoulder.

Certainly, in future, there will be a technology to integrate major components of a smartphone and music player to the wearable device. Thus, you can have an experience of a complete phone with the projector. The difference will be that your phone will not have a special touchscreen. Thinking further radical, smartphone usage will be far great if OmniTouch can be converted to a wristwatch-like device. Thus, you can project the interface on top of your palm and control it with other hand.

Applications

Indeed, OmniTouch will be a great extension to the way you use smartphones and music players these days. If the size of OmniTouch wearable device can be reduced further, people can use their phones at more comfort. Instead of carrying a large phone, you may just want a wristwatch-like device to project a user interface on any surface you want. To operate the device, you can just project the interface on your hand. Thus, you get your hand turned to a gorgeous touchscreen interface. Every function of the phone can be controlled using OmniTouch technology at ease. Of course, things will become more comfortable for you in future.

Quotes

According to the lead researcher behind the project, Chris Harrison, OmniTouch is a system that enables graphical and multitouch projection on any surface. Mr. Harrison adds,

Our shoulder-worn implementation allows users to manipulate interfaces projected onto the environment (e.g., walls, tables), held objects (e.g., notepads, books), and their own bodies (e.g., hands, lap).