Microsoft OmniTouch: Turn your entire world into a touchscreen

Those who lay down to the saying that bigger is always better, and as a result struggle with the small size of the screen of their mobile device, your pain is shared. It seems that finding real estate to work and operate with on mobile devices is a constant battle and a hindrance on productivity. There is hope, however, as some researchers have heard the cries of the frustrated users who simply do not have enough space.

Meet OmniTouch and PocketTouch, technologies that use projection and sound harmonics to create touchscreens out of any surface in the world. Coming out of their Redmond-based labs, Microsoft researchers using Kinect technology and pico projectors created the two applications because they wanted to take advantage of the vast amount of flat spaces in the world. They asked their people to imagine what it would be like to have the biggest touchscreen they could think of, only limited by the size of the physical space they could project onto. It was out of this visioning that OmniTouch was born.

Using a shoulder mounted pico projector, and aKinect-like depth of field sensor, OmniTouch creates a multitouch surface that users can interact with using their hands (video demo below). Say you were paying bills or trying to split a tab with a large part at a restaurant, you could project a calculator on the table for everyone to see, or use a whiteboard to figure out your cash flow. A user could even make a part of their body touchable for making phone calls or sending an email. Right now the shoulder mount is a bit bulky, but can be brought down to a manageable size in future releases.

PocketTouch is a more discreet application, in the fact that it allows users to interact with the screens of their mobile devices while in their pockets. Using a set of sensors that can detect touch even through cloth, PocketTouch makes it possible to send a text or to interact with a music application by making gestures or tracing symbols through a pocket. For example, if you’re on a crowded plane or train and can’t get to your pocket to pull your phone out, you could fast forward the song by swiping your pant leg.

Both technologies have exciting applications: Perhaps we will see a Xbox game or remote that uses the shoulder mount to allow users to interact with their games. To be able to hack consoles in Deus Ex on a wall or hand would be sublime. Being able to change your ringer settings in a meeting without taking the handset out of a pocket would be a life saver in several instances. Making this useful for today’s computing needs is not something that is way off in the distance, but something that is going to have an impact sooner or later. This technology would sooner or later be used in phones and would definitely replace smartphones.