There's also more important applications for this, for example detecting common postures and grips on fallen asleep drivers or knives that know when their not being handled properly. Additionally a world of possibilities opens up for the blind and disabled if you can inform them of objects they are touching in a room. I find these applications (and surely many more I am not enumerating) much more appealing then controlling a phone, but alas, that's what sells.
Lets hope the eye-candy stuff propels the technology so that the really useful stuff can be built at a lower price.
Totally! I actually found it really surprising how boring the potential usage examples in the video were compared to what's possible with some of these ideas.
I think it will be a wonderful boon for people with artificial limbs. A sense of touch may be all that is needed to reduce phantom limb pain, among other things.
This seems like an important step towards the fabled "Computronium"(1) allowing our environments to compute. Heavy handed regulators should pay very close attention to the consequences of monopolies granted around these ideas. One misstep allowing the patenting of "controlling stuff with touch" instead of allowing only the much more restrictive specific methods of detecting that touch could prune an entire branch off our technological development tree for decades to come.
What the hell is that part about kids and breakfast?! "Could be used to monitor and train kinds to use the right implements to eat breakfast". That is just messed up.
In all seriousness this is freaking awesome tech. Will definitely be huge, unless they fuck up the licensing or patent it to death.
> What the hell is that part about kids and breakfast?! "Could be used to monitor and train kinds to use the right implements to eat breakfast". That is just messed up.
Messed up? You're just looking at what it's doing, not how it can be applied. The ability to monitor a child with special needs with this sort of application is pretty amazing. Suddenly, this information can be transmitted and used to assist with therapy. Knowing how often a child uses a spoon/fork rather than his hands due to real data rather than parents recalling is powerful.
It also provides powerful feedback. A system setup to remind them child if they stop using their fork/spoon by showing a picture to remind them. This is already used in training. Unfortunately, it can't be automated. Tools like this would allow for that, and the potential is staggering. We are clearly years away, but this has the great potential to really help people.
I'd love to see this applied to guns where you have to make a much more intentioned grip for the safety to be disabled.
a gun that senses it is being held in a weird way will not fire.
I think the first application will be on a mouse. A mouse that has multi-dimensional touch features would be great.
This will also make creating an interface to control things like the whole house very easy. Basically enabling complex control of a full building's BMS easily.
Is that a big problem? Why don't the gun owners who perceive that as a problem use the safety or buy a gun with greater trigger pressure? If they don't do those things, why would they want to pay to add this feature?
There has been a lot research on grasp detection and interpretation over the last 10 years. Touché is just a new sensing technique, not a new interaction paradigm.
or how about guns that won't fire because you aren't the registered owner (or approved on 'firing list' of some sort, in the case of, let's say, a wife that's home alone when a burglar comes).
This needs to leap into the marketplace as soon as possible. The music player concept is brilliant, and that's only the tip of the iceberg.
I wonder about the potential of a screen-less touch vocabulary, such that you could type a text message without taking the phone out of your pocket. (Siri is nice and all, but it requires the user to yield control to the Cloud and pray that it responds accurately.)
This reminds me of this awesome rant on the future of interaction design where the author compares the "picture under glass" model of traditional touch interfaces with the amount of interactivity we have with a sandwich: http://worrydream.com/ABriefRantOnTheFutureOfInteractionDesi...
that's awesome.
in this application it would be hard though to sense the position of these gestures i.e. where in the liquid you touched. but combined with other sensing technologie (like optical or traditional capacitive) that would be a HIT.
[+] [-] vasco|14 years ago|reply
Lets hope the eye-candy stuff propels the technology so that the really useful stuff can be built at a lower price.
[+] [-] famousactress|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] aperrien|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] noonespecial|14 years ago|reply
(1) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computronium
[+] [-] harrisonp|14 years ago|reply
In all seriousness this is freaking awesome tech. Will definitely be huge, unless they fuck up the licensing or patent it to death.
[+] [-] jasonlotito|14 years ago|reply
Messed up? You're just looking at what it's doing, not how it can be applied. The ability to monitor a child with special needs with this sort of application is pretty amazing. Suddenly, this information can be transmitted and used to assist with therapy. Knowing how often a child uses a spoon/fork rather than his hands due to real data rather than parents recalling is powerful.
It also provides powerful feedback. A system setup to remind them child if they stop using their fork/spoon by showing a picture to remind them. This is already used in training. Unfortunately, it can't be automated. Tools like this would allow for that, and the potential is staggering. We are clearly years away, but this has the great potential to really help people.
[+] [-] eevilspock|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] cleverjake|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] samstave|14 years ago|reply
a gun that senses it is being held in a weird way will not fire.
I think the first application will be on a mouse. A mouse that has multi-dimensional touch features would be great.
This will also make creating an interface to control things like the whole house very easy. Basically enabling complex control of a full building's BMS easily.
[+] [-] mhb|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] raphman|14 years ago|reply
For example, Raymond Veldhuis has been working on smart gun grips that identify their owner since 2003: http://www.sas.el.utwente.nl/open/people/Raymond%20Veldhuis
[+] [-] personlurking|14 years ago|reply
Brings a whole new meaning to hacking, also.
[+] [-] lukifer|14 years ago|reply
I wonder about the potential of a screen-less touch vocabulary, such that you could type a text message without taking the phone out of your pocket. (Siri is nice and all, but it requires the user to yield control to the Cloud and pray that it responds accurately.)
[+] [-] hsshah|14 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] tocomment|14 years ago|reply
Also I never understand capacative sensing. Does the human have to be grounded for it to work? Why not?
[+] [-] HyprMusic|14 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] cleverjake|14 years ago|reply