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Tuesday, August 04, 2009

Five Futuristic Interfaces on Display at SIGGRAPH

Some very interesting ideas are being showcased this week at SIGGRAPH 2009.
By Will Knight

The annual meeting of the ACM's Special Interest Group on Graphics and Interactive Techniques, SIGGRAPH 2009, takes place in New Orleans this week. The event brings together some of the world's best digital artists and computer researchers and is a showcase for some interesting new interfaces.

Here are five particularly cool ideas that will be on display at this year's event.

1. Touchable Holography

A team of researchers at the University of Tokyo led by Hiroyuki Shinoda has developed a display that lets users "touch" objects that appear to float in space in front of them.

The virtual objects appear in mid-air thanks to an LCD and a concave mirror. The sensation of touching the objects is created using an ultrasound device positioned below the LCD and mirror. The airborne ultrasound tactile device used to produce the sensation of touch was demoed at SIGGRAPH in 2008.

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2. Augmented Reality for Ordinary Toys

Frantz Lasorne, a student at L'École de Design in France, has invented an ingenious way to breathe new life into old toys.

Lasorne's Scope display automatically recognizes ordinary toys that have been mounted onto platforms covered with hexagonal patterns. Viewed through the augmented reality display, these patterns become interactive buttons and can be used to make virtual modifications to the toy. As the video below shows, a Lego person can, for instance, be instantly armed with a giant virtual bazooka.

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3. Hyper-Realistic Virtual Reality

A team from INRIA and Grenoble Universities in France will demo a new virtual reality system called Virtualization Gate that tracks users' movements very accurately using multiple cameras, allowing them to interact with virtual objects with new realism.


The user wears a head-mounted display (HMD) and moves through a virtual space while several cameras track his movement. The video here shows a guy kicking over virtual vases and pushing around a virtual representation of himself. A cluster of PCs is needed to perform the necessary image capture and 3D modeling.

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4. 3D Teleconferencing

Researchers at the University of Southern California will demo Headspin, a 3D teleconferencing system that maintains eye contact between a three-dimensional head and several participants on the other end of a connection.

To capture an image, a polarized beam-splitter "places" the camera virtually near the eyes of the speaker. The 3D display works by projecting high-speed video onto a rapidly spinning aluminum disk to generate an accurate image for each viewer.

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5. Scratchable Input

Chris Harrison, a researcher at Carnegie Mellon University whose human-computer interaction work we've written about previously, will demonstrate his new scratch input technology. The system turns any surface into an instant input device by sensing the unique sound produced when a fingernail is dragged across it.

The interface is small enough to fit into a mobile device, Harrison says, and could thereby turn any surface the device is placed upon into an interface.

Comments

  • Incredibly Interesting
    These technologies sound like a basis of a whole new technological world. The scratachable input, for instance, seem to be extremely convinient when you are busy and don't want to attent your cell phone. The Hyper-Realistic Visual reality may be bring the world of gaming to a whole new dimension. A 3-D life-like gaming experience, without controllers or tv screens. To conclude, these innovations may have a massive impact on our lives if promoted adequately for the appropriate applications.
    Rate this comment: 12345

    nishant kuma...
    08/05/2009
    Posts:12
    Avg Rating:
    3/5
  • scratch input
    I'm surprised that the researchers are only using a single mic for scratch input. Presumably, with three mics, they'd be able to actually read the gestures in two dimensions based on the timing of the signals. Then they'd have a true "scratchpad". (Calibration would not be difficult, but there might be some interesting problems due to multipath transmission.)
    Rate this comment: 12345

    ms
    08/05/2009
    Posts:141
    Avg Rating:
    4/5
  • Second Life integration
    I really hope that these technologies can be integrated with 3D virtual world social networks like Second Life ... after which the border between the "real" and the "virtual" will be come increasingly blurred. see http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ebq0tbhap-g
    Rate this comment: 12345

    prithwis
    08/05/2009
    Posts:1
    Avg Rating:
    1/5
  • It's Not A Hologram
    Maybe their ultrasound array is a cool toy, but calling a TV reflected in a mirror a "hologram" removes all technical credibility from this team. Apparently I've wasted decades of research in laser light wave interference, when all I needed was a makeup mirror...
    Rate this comment: 12345

    hologram
    08/06/2009
    Posts:1
    Avg Rating:
    3/5
    • Re: It's Not A Hologram
      No, it's not a hologram but by using the word hologram people immediately have an idea of what the technology does. I don't think it's anything to get pretentious about.
      Rate this comment: 12345

      Celt
      08/07/2009
      Posts:2
      Avg Rating:
      4/5
    • Re: It's Not A Hologram
      You probably have never seen holograms generated using mirrors... they are really amazing. Look for example this one: http://www.eyetricks.com/mirage/
      Maybe you will change of mind and accept this as a hologram.
      Rate this comment: 12345

      fosorio
      08/08/2009
      Posts:1
      Avg Rating:
      5/5
      • Re: It's Not A Hologram
        The poster "hologram" was correctly pointing out that the image produced by the mirrors is not strictly a hologram. A hologram is a recording of interference patterns, usually obtained by splitting a laser beam and shining the resulting beams on an object to obtain an interference pattern.
        But yes, the images created by mirrors such as the one shown do look very effective.
        Rate this comment: 12345

        Celt
        08/13/2009
        Posts:2
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        4/5
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