king talk

The american computer developer Apple wants to patent a technique, which allows the transmission of the user motion to the screen. Apple submitted an application in December 2007 at the US patent office.  The patent was published last week, it´s officially called “Motion Tracking User Interface”.

This technique can match the movement of defined objects like your head, hand or an ordinary object like a cup of coffee to a virtual object at your desktop. Apple mentioned that e.g. the motion of your head could rotate a 3-dimensional teapot on your screen. Nowadays we use mouse, keyboard, graph tablet or trackball to interact with our computers, but for every device the hand of the user is needed. This technology should help the user to navigate without using both hands.

Apple published a patent some weeks ago, where they merged a display with image sensors. This could be the fundamental technology for the motion tracking. The whole patent is the answer to the 3D tracking system of 3DVsystems called Z-Cam, which was actually aquired by competitor Microsoft and will be used in the Natal project, which was shown at this years E3 gaming conference in Los Angeles.

via heise

Everybody knows Pong – one of the earliest arcade video games which is simply based on the elementary idea of tennis. We decided to take this concept one step further, so Phil wrote a nice color tracker, which is capable of tracking two different hues. In this case it recognizes two different socks put over the hands of each competitor. We were using a installation made of white corrugated fiberboard found in the leftovers from Atzinger Verpackungs GmbH in Munich. The tracking cam is a second hand PS2 eye toy camera which we bought for 14,99 EUR at gamestop store just around the corner.

The well-known software we were using is processing, a programming language and integrated development environment (IDE) built for the electronic arts and visual design communities. We had to build the prototype both quickly and cheaply, so it was more important to be functionally efficient rather than aesthetically perfect. In the end the whole assembly cost us 15 EUR and took just an afternoon to build.

This pong game is in fact a mashup of the results of our 24h toyhacking session which took place on Friday, and the week-long SHARE project from Yannick Assogba  (MIT Media Lab / Sociable Media Group)

Having a big ass multitouch table at home might be cool. But while you are developing the awesome apps you gonna run on it, it´s quite annoying to test them on that big thing. Basically there are 3 alternative ways to more or less »simulate« the multitouch behaviour:

1. iPhone/iPod Touch > OSCemote > flosc > Flash

My favourite one is using the multitouch ability of my iPod Touch. Running OSCemote (iTunes) on your iPod you can send the multitouch input via WiFi to your MacBook Pro. There you just need to forward the data via FLOSC (Flash Open Sound Control) to use it in Flash. This setup provides the best multitouch feeling for the least effort.

Alternate tools, but more or less complex to handle: TouchOSC, MRMR or SWAP.

2. cardboard prototype > CCV > Flash

Before using my iPod as tracking device I used »NHALT«, a Cheap Multitouch Pad we built in about 30min. using a white paper, some slices of a packing case and a 3-year-old Webcam (Logitech Quickcam) for about 30 EUR. Since the NUI Group upgraded their Tracking Software from »tbeta« to »CCV« it is the only step you need between the pad and Flash. This solution is real fun if you like a little DIY and is the one closest to a real table.

3. SimTouch > SocketServer > Flash

You don’t have an iPod Touch, DIY is not your thing or you don’t want to relay on good lighting for testing your awesome app then SimTouch might be the solution for you. This multitouch simulator  is an elegant semi-transparent window you can lay over your flash application. Via SocketServer the signal gets relayed to Flash and off you go!

If you know a possible fourth solution. Feel free to comment it…

Sorry, there was to much SPAM to leave the comments open.

What most of the media tables out there (especially multi-touch tables) are missing is haptics: Touching a multi-touch table surface to sort photos or resize maps is great, but try using it without looking, and your fingers will quickly wander off that on-screen virtual button, slider, or keyboard. The SLAP project changes this — by letting you put real, physical widget set like a keypad (a), knob (b), slider (c), keyboardknobs (d), and other controls right onto the table. Being able to feel those controls makes it much easier to use them without looking.

The trick: the controls are made from silicone and acrylic, so they are transparent, and the computer inside the table can detect their position on the table surface and project the right labeling right onto those controls from underneath. This makes it easy to, say, relabel a SLAP Keyboard from US to German keyboard layout (without paying much money to Art Lebedevs OLED keyboard), or to make a SLAP Button look like a Play button to control videos in one instant, and the next moment turn it into a button to save a file.

But how do SLAP controls know what they should be controlling? Easy — just double-tap your finger, say, next to a SLAP Keyboard and on a text editing window at the same time, and the two are connected: whatever you type on the SLAP keyboard will end up in the text window. This way, SLAP controls bring haptic and tactile feedback back into the world of virtual, on-screen table interfaces, combining the advantages of physical and on-screen controls. And since they are just passive objects, with no electronics, they are simple, robust, and cheap — something researchers and designers will appreciate when prototyping the tabletop applications of the future. For more information, visit the website of RWTH Aachen.

Our Chemieraum projects input device had a similar approach. We think that a combination of tools and touch will be the future or what do you think?

The freeware »Mightier« is an independent puzzle action game developed by Lucas Pope and Keiko Ishizaka and was one of the finalists of this years 11th Independet Games Festival (San Francisco/CA). Play as the »Engineer« and the »Actionaut« to solve puzzles and collect items in each sector. First you have to print so called »puzzle« from within Mightier using a color printer. You have to solve the puzzle by drawing on the page with a dark pencil or marker. Scan the puzzle into the game using an attached web camera. A high-powered space laser carves the solution and the Actionaut is dropped onto the surface, which you have drawn before. Now it´s up to you. Take control of the Actionaut and collect all the »Datagons« in each sector. I think it´s quite fun to play otherwise the detour of the drawing via the web cam is quite tricky.

The way of converting the 2D images into 3D models reminds me of the »Teddy project« (1999) by Takeo Igarashi, a sketching interface for 3D freeform design. You can draw and configure your 2D sketch in space. If you test it online, you will notice that the interaction is very clumsy. The 3D library of Teddy is Open Source.

via Schröder+Wendt