Whereas the Sixthsense requires that the user wear color-markers on his fingers so that the camera can track them, the Kinect does all the work in Harrison’s concept device. The OmniTouch is also slightly more compact than the Sixthsense. It’s also shoulder-mounted, making you look like a robot pirate. Or a bird trainer.

Click to View Embedded Video Clip

I wonder if this will be the next big thing in portable computing immediately after tablets. Both the Sixthsense and OmniTouch are great concepts – they encourage people to go out and interact with the world instead of mooring us on our chairs or beds.  We’ll be able to hold our own drive-in and outdoor theaters, augment analog games with digital enhancements and access information about anything we encounter – animals, plants, gadgets, food, landmarks. And we’ll be able to publicly bitch about how this magical device has a short battery life and that the screen isn’t too bright or some other thing that doesn’t please us. Instead of graffiti, memes, Twitter feeds and Facebook wall posts will be projected on walls. Wow. I just made myself sad.

[Chris Harrison via TechCrunch]

Patty has surfaced for the first time in a video on the Microsoft Surface blog and the bot is interesting. It doesn’t look like a what you might picture as a robot, it’s more a box that has automated touching pistons inside.

Each of the automated touch wands are powered by air. They each have different tips on them to simulate various things that would be placed on the Surface 2.0 table. One simulates a tag that would be on an object. Another tip simulates a finger others simulate blobs of different shapes. They can be activated individually or in unison to simulate multi-touch. You can check out the video of Patty in action here (if you happen to have Silverlight installed on your computer.)

The giant curved touchscreen display was created by a team at the University of Groningen. Three computers handle the touch detection, while another processes all of the incoming touch-based inputs. The overall display relies on 6 cameras and 16 IR emitters, and has a total resolution of 4900 x 1700 pixels.

It can handle over 100 touch points at the same time. One of the great things about this touchscreen is that it doesn’t rely on any fancy new technology. It was basically put together with some PCs, video cameras, projectors and cheap infrared illuminators.

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[via Slashgear via PC World]

Created by Displax, Skin is paper-thin and flexible, and when applied, can detect up to 16 finger touches at once. Skin is ideal for application onto glass or other hard, flat surfaces, and can even detect somebody blowing on the surface. Skin’s polymer surface is embedded with nanowires, which can detect the precise location of a touch, and even the direction of air flow over the wires.

As an added bonus, Skin can detect touches through surfaces up to 17mm thick, so it can be placed behind a pane of glass so as not to risk damage to the touchscreen itself.

Displax Skin is available in just about any size you can imagine, and connects to a computer using either a USB or serial connection. It sure looks like this stuff could provide for some really awesome interactive displays, especially when combined with projected images.

[via Mashable]

You can really imagine all of the cool drawing programs you could create if you could detect the pressure applied with a stylus, and the guys at Ten One Design have figured out a way to do this, even though it’s not officially supported by Apple.

Click to View Embedded Video Clip

And therein lies the rub… Since they had to build a private function call to make this work, it’s not something they can make available in the App Store. Ten One hopes Apple will see what they’ve done and roll the capability into the UIKit framework, but for now we’ll just have to admire their programming prowess from afar.

Apple, please check out what Ten One has achieved, and roll it into UIKit so we can all enjoy it! Thanks.

Let’s start with the hardware: The iPad will come packaged in a svelte 0.5″ thick package with an aluminum body and glass screen, and weighs in at 1.5 pounds. The screen is a bright LED backlit IPS LCD, measuring 9.7″ diagonally.

The screen on the iPad offers a sharp 1024 x 768 resolution, which is plentiful for a display of its size. That said, the 132 pixel-per-inch density isn’t as sharp as say, the Skiff e-Reader. As expected, it’s a full multi-touch screen.

The iPad is powered by Apple’s very own A4 CPU, running at 1GHz. This chip is said to be very powerful, and requires very little electricity to keep it ticking along. In addition, the iPad will include everything you’ve become accustomed to with your iPhone 3GS – an accelerometer, ambient light sensor, and a digital compass. The Wi-Fi + 3G model will also include A-GPS and cellular data capabilities, while the cheaper Wi-Fi only model will not.

There’s even a special iPad keyboard dock coming out, which will let you use the iPad instead of a netbook PC, and you’d rather not use the on-screen keyboard.

There’s a built-in rechargeable battery that can crank out up to 10 hours of media playback and Wi-Fi internet access, so runtime should be plenty for most users. But if you were looking for the weeks-between-charges features that e-Book readers offer, you won’t want to ditch your Kindle or Nook just yet (just wait for the iPad 2.) The iPad also has a built in microphone, speakers, and a 30-pin dock connector just like its little brother.

You’ll be able to play high-def video at up to 720p/30fps resolution H.264 video using an external cable, but when watching videos on the iPad screen, you’ll be limited to 1024×576 on-screen for widescreen content, since the display is designed more for computing, gaming and book reading than for movie watching.

In terms of apps, the iPad comes pre-loaded with a full version of Safari for web browsing – and can handle full-size web pages with aplomb. That is, unless they require Flash. Apple, you really need to give in to Adobe and embrace Flash again. I know it could compete with the App Store, but now that you’ve got a device with a full-screen web browser, it’s inexcusable that it doesn’t support Flash.

There’s also a Mail app that’s on par with what you’d find on a desktop computer. I also like how the iTunes experience that’s on board is very similar to the full desktop app.

Photo browsing looks like it’ll be a breeze with the built-in gallery manager (which is sort of like iPhoto in a portable form-factor). And while there’s no built-in memory card reader (boo!), Apple will be offering a separate camera connection kit for pulling images from digital cameras via USB or an SD card.

The iPad will also include all of the other usual suspects including an iPod app, YouTube, video player, notes, calendar, contacts, and access to the App Store for downloading the same apps that run on the iPhone, as well as apps that are iPad-specific. And iPhone apps can be run either at original size, or blown up to full screen mode (althought I’m not sure how ugly apps that use bitmapped graphics will get in this mode).

One big change from the iPhone and iPod Touch is the mobile iBook store. This will offer numerous full-size books, magazines and newspapers from major publishers. While you don’t get the battery life of a Kindle or Nook, you get a full color screen that you can read in the dark – which is awfully nice.

Apple has announced that iPad pricing will start at $499 (USD), with the Wi-Fi only version hitting late this March, and the Wi-Fi + 3G models to come in April. When all is said and done, there will be 6 available configurations:

• Wi-Fi: 16GB ($499) / 32GB ($599) /64GB ($699)
• Wi-Fi + 3G: 16GB ($629) / 32GB ($729) /64GB ($829)

There are alot of things to like about the iPad, but many things that are disappointing to me. I would have thought a face mounted camera would have been great for video chat, and there’s no good way to get your high-def video off of here and onto your TV. And the lack of Flash support is just downright ridiculous at this point. They also neglected to add multitasking support, so bouncing between applications won’t be as smooth as on your MacBook. Still, as an entertainment device, my curiosity is piqued sufficiently that I will probably pick one up when it hits the Apple Store this Spring.

You can check out more details on the iPad over at the Apple website.

With this nifty Smart Pad peripheral from Speed, you can add not only an external numeric keypad to your laptop or desktop, but one that works as a true multitouch input device. The compact Smart Pad plugs into any available USB port, and ships with software which lets you start using multitouch gestures to control window movement, mouse buttons, image zooming, scrolling, and other interactions with your computer. The touchpad can support 1, 2 and 3-finger gestures, many of which work with all programs.

There are also a number of specialized gestures that work with popular programs like the MS Office suite and Adobe Acrobat. No word on whether or  not there’s any multitouch drawing apps that’ll work with the Smart Pad, but I’m hoping that somebody will hack one together since the hardware could certainly support it.

Just keep in mind that these early drivers pictured below are in Korean, but I’m hopeful the final version ships with English software.

The Smart Pad’s specs say it works with Windows XP/Vista, though, so I’m not sure if there are any compatibility issues with Windows 7, which has native multitouch support. The device ships this November and is available for pre-order over at Brando for $40 (USD).

As you can see, SixthSense is made up of a camera that tracks the color-marked fingers, and a projector to display whatever relevant information the system digs up. What’s not in the picture is of course the computer itself, in this case a “mobile computing device” installed with software that analyzes the gestures and the objects captured by the camera, so that it can respond and provide the appropriate information. What sort of information? Let’s start with a little trick: if Mistry traces a small circle on his wrist using his index finger, SixthSense will project a watch onto his wrist:

There are many other gestures that the system recognizes – drawing a magnifying glass projects a map application, while drawing the ‘@’ symbol lets the user check his/her email. SixthSense can also interact with everyday objects, like in the image below where it reveals that the flight which the user has a ticket to is delayed.

And here we see SixthSense providing Amazon’s rating for a book on the book’s cover itself:

SixthSense can also pull up video from the internet:

That right there is so awesome. SO AWESOME. As you can see, SixthSense is like a portable, more intuitive, multi-touch version of Google. As Pranav Mistry says on his website: “SixthSense frees information from its confines by seamlessly integrating it with reality, and thus making the entire world your computer.”

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And the best part? All this automagical stuff we’ve seen was achieved on a prototype that costs only $350 USD to build. There are netbooks that are more expensive than this system. If SixthSense becomes mass-produced or integrated into computing devices, I’d imagine prices will only go south of that figure. SixthSense really has the potential to make digital information as accessible as possible, the same way that cellular phones made communication instant and affordable.

[via Pop Sci]

Designed by Nicholas G Panas of play /, LEGO-touch will let you build virtual LEGO creations using a large catalog of basic building blocks. Using the iPhone’s multi-touch display, you can easily grab blocks and assemble them into just about any shape you can imagine. A slick user interface lets you easily zoom in and rotate your designs, and easily apply any color in the spectrum to each of your blocks.

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In addition to the basic block construction kit, Nicholas’ concept will let share your designs over the Internet. You can even create your own Mii-like avatar using those familiar LEGO block people. One of my favorite features is the ability to challenge your online friends to a LEGO “build-off”.

While you don’t get the tactile experience of holding real LEGO blocks in your hands, you do get the advantage of being able to carry all your creations in your pocket wherever you go. Plus, you never have to worry about running out of blocks.

play/ is currently working to launch the LEGO-touch concept into software production. Be sure to head on over to their website to check out their high quality Flash-based demonstration.

[via PSFK]

iPhone developer Mister Aardvark has just released iAno, a true multi-touch piano simulator for the iPhone.

Click to View Embedded Video Clip

The simulator offers a complete four-octave keyboard (you jump around the keyboard using the arrows at the top of the screen), with polyphonic sound allowing up to five keys to be played simultaneously. its loaded with real piano samples, making it sound just like the real deal.

Aardvark plans on adding additional features such as a complete 88-key keyboard, switchable sample sets, recording and playback, as well as support for loading .MID tracks and playing them back.

[Installing iAno via QJ.NET]

The design features a mouse with a sensing surface that can be programmed to interact with objects and shapes on screen in a similar way to multi-touch screens that we’ve seen (and experienced – thanks iPhone!)

Apple’s mouse concept uses a backlit transparent shell and a tiny camera with a super wide-angle lens on the inside to record the position of fingers on the surface. Then, a digital signal processor would correct the image distortion from the curved shell and an image processing application would convert that data into information for the computer to use.

If this device ever does make it to market, it shakes up the whole notion of multi-touch. It could add multi-touch to any computer, rather than for the elite few who can afford a fancy system with it incorporated into the display. As an added bonus, this approach would alleviate some the the challenges of display-based multi-touch (i.e. finger smudges, difficulty with precise pointing, getting used to a touch surface instead of a mouse, etc.)

[via PC Joint via Engadget]

By hacking some infrared sensors through the back of a standard laptop display, they’re able to track the locations and pressure from multiple finger locations. As an added benefit of the infrared technology, the interface can also be manipulated with a simple remote control pointed at the display.

Click to View Embedded Video Clip

A gesture-based user interface application then allows for manipulation of objects much in the same way that we saw with Surface and on Apple’s upcoming iPhone.

Each time I see another one of these tech demos, it becomes clearer to me that multi-touch interfaces have the potential to replace (or at least significantly augment) the decades-old mouse as our means of interacting with computers.

[via 10]

The 16 x 8-foot interactive display allowed multiple visitors to simultaneously control audio, video, photos and other multimedia content using their hands to navigate.

Click to View Embedded Video Clip

The installation was put together by Obscura Digital and commissioned by HP as part of an advertising campaign for the event.

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GUI Wiz Darren David was responsible for putting together the user interface using Microsoft’s Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF.) According to David, the entire project was designed, developed an built in just four weeks.

[via Fresh Creation]

We’ve seen earlier research prototypes of this technology under the moniker PlayAnywhere, but now Microsoft is commercializing it. The initial Surface system looks like a table with 30-inch flat panel monitor embedded beneath the tabletop.

Like Apple’s iPhone, Surface supports multi-touch, meaning it can detect touch in multiple locations on the display, providing the ability to “grab” and manipulate objects on the screen. The system can also accept simultaneous input from multiple users, making it perfect for gaming and other entertainment uses. In addition, it can interact with objects placed on the surface for everything from augmented reality applications to detecting when a media player is placed on the surface so it can begin transferring digital content via a wireless connection.

Surface runs on the Windows Vista platform, but has specialized software which provides the touch and gesture interface. With the initial units costing around $10k each, Microsoft sees the initial applications for surface being in bars, restaurants, casinos, hotels and other locations where users might interact with menus, maps, games or other information without need for a mouse, keyboard or other control device. They expect to ship the first devices later this year.

Click to View Embedded Video Clip

[via VideoSift]

Technical Overview from Microsoft Research (PDF)