Microsoft Scratches the Surface
While Han was perfecting his setup, engineers elsewhere were pursuing similar goals by different means. Software giant Microsoft is now rolling out a smaller multi-touch computer called Surface and is trying to brand this category of hardware as “surface computers”. The initiative dates back to 2001, when Stevie Bathiche of Microsoft Hardware and Andy Wilson of Microsoft Research began developing an interactive tabletop that could recognize certain physical objects placed on it. The two innovators envisioned that the tabletop could function as an electronic pinball machine, a video puzzle or a photo browser. More than 85 prototypes later, the pair ended up with a table that has a clear acrylic top and houses a projector on the floor below. The projector sends imagery up onto the horizontal, 30-inch screen. An infrared LED shines light up to the tabletop as well, which bounces off fingertips or objects on the other side, thus allowing the device to recognize commands from people’s fingers. A Windows Vista computer provides the processing. Microsoft is shipping Surface table computers to four partners in the leisure, retail and entertainment industries, which it believes are most likely to apply the technology. Starwood Hotels’ Sheraton chain, for example, will try installing surface computers in hotel lobbies that will let guests browse and listen to music, send home digital photographs, or order food and drinks. Customers in T-Mobile USA’s retail stores will be able to compare different cell phone models by simply placing them atop a surface screen; black-dotted “domino” tags on the undersides of the phones will cue the system to display price, feature and phone plan details. Other Microsoft software will allow a wireless-enabled digital camera, when placed on a surface computer, to upload its photographic content to the computer without a cable. First-generation surface systems are priced from $5,000 to $10,000. As with most electronic items, the company expects the price to decline as production volume increases. Microsoft says Surface computers should be available at consumer prices in three to five years.
Mitsubishi Wired In, Too Technology developers might be interested in the DiamondTouch table from a start-up company called Circle Twelve in Framingham, Mass., that was recently spun off from Mitsubishi Electric Research Laboratories. The table, developed at Mitsubishi, is configured so that outside parties can write software for applications they envision; several dozen tables are already in the hands of academic researchers and commercial customers. The purpose of DiamondTouch “is to support small-group collaboration”, says Adam Bogue, Mitsubishi’s vice president of marketing. “Multiple people can interact, and the system knows who’s who”. Several people sit in chairs that are positioned around the table and are linked to a computer below. When one of them touches the tabletop, an array of antennas embedded in the screen sends an extremely small amount of radio-frequency energy through the person’s body and chair to a receiver in the computer, a scheme known as capacitive coupling. Alternatively, a special floor mat can be used to complete the circuit. The antennas that are coupled indicate the spot on the screen that the person is touching. Though seemingly restrictive, this setup can keep track of who makes what inputs, and it can give control to whoever touches the screen first. In that case it will ignore other touches, sensed through the assigned seating, until the first user has completed his or her inputs. The system can also track who makes which annotations to images, such as blueprints. Parsons Brinckerhoff, a global engineering firm headquartered in New York City, has been experimenting with the tables and plans to acquire more. “We have thousands of meetings during the course of a big project”, says Timothy Case, the company’s visualization department regional manager. “We could have multiple tables in multiple locations, and everybody can be looking at the same thing.” Both the Diamond Touch and Perceptive Pixel systems feature keyboard “emulators” that shine a virtual keyboard onto the screen so that people can type. But it seems unlikely that enthusiasts would prefer to use the dynamic systems for this mundane activity. The great strength of multi-touch is letting multiple people work together on a complex activity. It is hard to remember how liberating the mouse seemed when it freed people from keyboard arrow keys some 25 years ago.Soon the multi-touch interface could help untether us from the ubiquitous mouse. “It’s very rare that you come upon a really new user interface”, Han says. “We’re just at the beginning of this whole thing”.
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发表于 2015-6-17 08:38
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