Gesture interaction and projected computers

While many in the blogosphere appear to be obsessed over multi-touch patents on cellphones, I can’t help but think how temporal all this concern will likely be. Yes, multi-touch on capacitive displays will be around awhile, but there’s more to come with touch.

Think about it: What if the displays are flexible? What about multi-touch then? Will things be different? Or the same? Don’t think flexible displays are that too far in the future either to not worry about. Sony was demoing an early prototype at this year’s CES. Yes, maybe 5+ years down the road, but engineers need to start thinking through things now.

There are more twists and turns coming down the road. Wired magazine is reporting on a MIT project that leverages projected displays and hand gestures. There are a couple videos on the Wired page that are worthwhile seeing. Check them out.

The basic idea is that you “wear” your computer with you at all times, maybe like a necklace, maybe on a cap and then it projects relavent content on any surface in front of you. A camera (though could be other sensors) detects how you might be interacting with the display.

In one demo, a person is seen projecting a number pad on the face of their hand and is dialing a number using it by touching the projection. It brings a whole new meaning to touch computers.

There have been other projected keyboard prototypes and projected whiteboard systems with “touch” too, just meaning here that we need to be careful not to lock ourselves into touch meaning touching a display or a touchpad. There’s more to it.

In terms of gesture-based systems, the MIT prototype has users wear different colored “labels” on four of their fingertips in order to aid a webcam that watches your moves. The result is some interesting gestures that people can use to interact with the display.