"It's a unique machine that combines an all-in-one Windows 8 PC with a set of 3D scanning cameras, a giant tactile touchpad and a downward-facing projector (for displaying graphics on said touchpad). The design is built around a concept HP is calling "blended reality" that blends the 3D physical world with our 2D digital one. The obvious target audience is creative types. You know: makers, tinkerers, designers, etc... Rather than the traditional method of control built around mice and keyboards, Sprout focuses on touch and pen input. The 23-inch LCD serves as the primary display, but it's the bottom display, the 20-inch capacitive pad positioned under the camera and projector that serves as the primary point of interaction."
In my opinion, the killer app is digitisation of paper documents, tracking changes, and live multi-user editing. The 3d scanning stuff is a neat addition on top of that, but a much more niche use case.
e.g. My colleague writes a document and emails it to me. I open it, print it out, and bring it to Sprout, placing it on the capacitive mat. As I'm reading it, I'm annotating it with pen on paper. Sprout tracks my annotations, digitizes them, and adds them as a digital layer to the original document.
While I'm annotating, my colleague joins the "session" and wants to make more changes and incorporate some of my suggestions. I see that notification, chuck away my piece of paper, and have Sprout project the digital document onto the capacitive pad. While I watch, my colleague makes changes which are live-updated to my document. I see her copy my hand-written notes which have been digitised and OCR'd. She takes my notes, changes the font, and sticks them into one of the paragraphs. Likewise, I can use the stylus to make more annotations that my colleague sees in real-time, or, since the document is digital this time around, I can just edit the paragraphs directly too.
Think Google Wave + Collusion for iPad + the ability to do fairly seamlessly with both digital and physical documents.
The video works for me, but I have to agree with the other comments - I needed to work very hard to figure out what exactly this actually was.
The first 40! seconds of the video didn't show the product in action, the first image of it was from such an odd angle that I didn't even know it was an image of it at first, and the later images don't actually show the camera that seems to be an important part of it.
Part of me thinks this is a solution in want of a problem, designed by the kind of person who uses a spoon for soup and a fork for their main course and thinks "If only I had a combination fork-spoon, my life would be so much simpler".
> The first 40! seconds of the video didn't show the product in action
Same about the microsite: "We believe hands can do amazing things. What will you do with yours?" - So what is the site about? I scroll down one screen - "Blending the physical and digital worlds that you live in, Sprout unleashes your creativity like never before." - I still got no idea, it's just marketing gibberish.
The visual design is certainly beautiful, but there's a lesson: First of all, tell me what the site is about!
I don't know, I got it. I actually kind of like the idea and think it could be quite useful if it's high enough resolution.
What is a bit problematic for me is the position of the projector/camera relative to the monitor. I really don't want to have to extend my arm out to interact through touch. I f-ing hate having to interact with touch at a distance. I don't think it works for extended periods because it puts a strain on your arm.
I would have much more liked a design that allowed you to rotate monitor vertically so the projection/camera surface is off to the side or something. Or maybe they should make the projector/camera surface a separate device.
> Part of me thinks this is a solution in want of a problem, designed by the kind of person who uses a spoon for soup and a fork for their main course and thinks "If only I had a combination fork-spoon, my life would be so much simpler".
I'm not convinced either - the demo could have been done with a smartphone app (take a picture, then allow you to manipulate objects via touchscreen).
Maybe there's more depth information that this device can capture that would be difficult to do with a normal camera? Maybe the project can do neat projections onto objects placed underneath it?
Seems like this could find success in specific niches (things needing tactile design?). Not sure if that's where HP wants to go with this.
I watched the second video first, so it was pretty obvious what it actually does. The first video is a bit useless.
I hope they sell the camera part separately, that's the awesome part. The touchscreen doesn't seem to serve a purpose, that would be just as good or better with a mouse or trackpad.
The touch idea is cute, but I don't see the point in touch when there's no tactile feedback.
I simply scrolled through the whole page, didn't find any useful description and closed it. I guess a nice, short text summary at the top of the page is out of fashion now.
Yeah for 1800 they need to be doing a lot better job marketing their video wouldn't even play, their page is way too vague, 1800 is not starving artist friendly and their target are high end Mac users, this would be a bigger win if it was under $1000 and was a set of accessories to pimp out the Mac mini, this functionality + macosx. Get creative and make a deal with apple trying to sell creatives on windows 8 is going to lose
The Aha moment for me was watching the beans spill on the touchpad and getting immediately digitized and put into a presentation.
They also should have taken a real necklace, placed it on the touchpad and had it instantly digitized, then manually manipulated around the woman's neck.
Very cool product. I love seeing highly imaginative products, especially coming from well established companies.
Suggestion: Maybe whoever was in charge of this development project could push thru that super-cool HP logo and branding that HP was too scared to implement: http://techcrunch.com/2011/12/14/please-save-hp/
I think their existing logo is far better. The one above looks too modern, minimalistic, abstract, and edgy. For HP, I kind of expect something a little more curvy, playful, and potentially colorful.
This might be the future! I think that HP has got something that is the "Next big thing". This revolutionary computer has the potential to be for everyone, especially Children.
See DT's first look at http://www.digitaltrends.com/computing/hp-sprout-multi-jet-f...
So, it's a combined 23" touch screen and projection surface with touch and camera-based tracking, at a 90 degree angle to each other. With a built-in Core-i7-based computer, of course.
Pretty nifty, but also extremely specialized. Daring move!
I gave this a cursory scroll but by the time I got to the bottom I didn't know what the product was. I was also annoyed by the overcooked design so I gave up. Sorry.
I did the same thing and also didn't understand what it was. I also can't watch the video right now.
Then I studied the images a little closer. It seems that thing on top the monitor projects an image on the mat on the desktop. The mat seems to be touch sensitive which means you're primary interface is no longer a keyboard/mouse combo but a new interface that will be unique to each application.
Sounds interesting but unless other manufacturers starting selling the same thing, I doubt it'll be widespread enough to attract a large enough group of developers to build apps for it which will probably mean it might be niche product. Still cool though.
I wonder to what degree public perception of a company's brand (think HP, Microsoft, Ebay vs Google, Apple) helps or hinders their ability to get a product off the ground. It reminds me of the old Shakespearean "What's in a name?" question.
One would like to believe that the product, if good enough, will always win out, but that's probably not the case, especially if it relies on an ecosystem to develop around it to be fully viable.
If brand quality matters severely, then an interesting question is whether or not startups have an advantage against large corps with bad reputations. Is it better to be StartuppyMcstartup nobody's ever heard of or Microsoft?
I think it can hinder it quite a bit, especially for something like this. The UX design for blending physical and virtual environments has to be nearly perfect. HP's track record with consumer facing software does not instill me with confidence that they can pull this off. I hope to be surprised.
If apple had released this product, it would sell like crazy. I think the fact that HP made it will prevent it from getting traction, but it would be nice to be proven wrong.
I admit the second thing I thought of after finally figuring out what this thing does, was how are they going to sell this for $50 and what will be the equivalent of the required every three months $75 ink cartridge?
The first thing I thought of was whenever you see something like this, its to goose the stock price. Generic investor types will fall for anything, as generations of AT&T and IBM advertisements have shown. I checked finance.google.com and this must be either very new news or older than a week news.
At the time I'm writing this all posts are complaining about the presentation of the site... yes it sucks, but the product looks really cool. It appears to be a combination of a camera and projection tool allowing the user to add real objects, such as a coffee mug, to the projected image and have it added to that image. Then user can use their hands to digitally move things around and otherwise manipulate the image.
That is really cool, but I can't help but think how limited its uses are. The real-world objects need to be relatively small (like a coffee cup, not a car) and you are limited by taking pictures from the top-down angle. However, that kind of interaction is really natural and would be easier to learn than say Photoshop.
As a pre-school lab coach with 300 children weekly in my lab I would LOVE to get two and see what kids could do with some help with teachers.
I really like the idea of kids putting a physical 3d object into something 2d and build a simple blue print. STEM tool for children seems perfect to me.
This is the coolest thing out of HP in a long time. I hope they don't screw it up in the typical HP way through tone-deaf responses to the market. They are going to have to work pretty hard winning over consumers because their PC and device brand has been damaged almost irreparably through decades of selling characterless beige boxes with poor performance, durability, and customer support.
Yes! Disclaimer: I own an Osmo. One thing where Osmo wins for sure is the name.
The name appart, sprout is trying to be much more than Osmo. I have to emphasize the "trying" though.
Sprout is going in all the directions between the 3D scanning, the touchpad and the projector. Osmo is much more modest with just a camera looking at the table, but this also means they could concentrate on user interactions that really made sense and an incredibly good pattern recognition experience.
Anyway if I have the opportunity to play with Sprout I will!
Neat machine. Desktop computers need things like this. After all, what can you do with today's desktop computers that you can't conveniently do with a tablet?
I can't predict a mass market destiny to this but it warms my heart to see a huge company release some kind of engineering chimera
3d cam is what is a perfect addition to 3d printers. Well, 3d printers prove pretty useless without 3d cams. It also enables 3d movement detection.
Something bugs me though, how is it possible for the 3d cam to see beneath the object (bird origami) to come out with such a perfectly scanned shape?
Same here and I took the full tour. For some reason the camera has to go around the device to show me the touch mat and from there it goes all the way around to tell me that the display is touch screen. Why does it have to keep going around the device? beats me!
I see some interesting potential to make a three-dimensional experience using camera tracking and perspective effects on the surface.
Although at first I was a bit skeptical of the replacement of a touchscreen with a projector, there are some capabilities of a projector that you just don't get with a touchscreen – mainly, projecting images on real objects placed on the pad. This, combined with a 3D printer, could allow designers to create 3D shapes and project surfaces onto these objects.
Interesting that it's being sold as an all-in-one, where it could easily be a peripheral that works with any computer. It's packaged as signature bold product but they got there incrementally, using (as others have pointed out) an idea that's come around at times before (but in even more niche areas like museums).
I was big into experimental interfaces in around 2006. There was a similar peripheral for the Mac whose name escapes me. (I only ever saw marketing material for it.)
It had a sensor to detect the depth and positions of your hands above your desk. Its software would then cast a hand-shaped shadow on your screen, so you could see what you were about to interact with. The UI was like a touchscreen, but you'd abstract the touching away from the displaying for ergonomics.
It was a cool concept. Bummed it never went anywhere. Sprout could be interesting, but it would be a lot more interesting if it came from a brand that moved platforms (like Apple). I don't know if HP has the developer mindshare (or sales volume) to have a "revolutionary" product that people get excited about. There are too many other Windows machines (both inside and outside HP) for this to get the attention it deserves.
[+] [-] pa5tabear|11 years ago|reply
"It's a unique machine that combines an all-in-one Windows 8 PC with a set of 3D scanning cameras, a giant tactile touchpad and a downward-facing projector (for displaying graphics on said touchpad). The design is built around a concept HP is calling "blended reality" that blends the 3D physical world with our 2D digital one. The obvious target audience is creative types. You know: makers, tinkerers, designers, etc... Rather than the traditional method of control built around mice and keyboards, Sprout focuses on touch and pen input. The 23-inch LCD serves as the primary display, but it's the bottom display, the 20-inch capacitive pad positioned under the camera and projector that serves as the primary point of interaction."
[+] [-] Schwolop|11 years ago|reply
In my opinion, the killer app is digitisation of paper documents, tracking changes, and live multi-user editing. The 3d scanning stuff is a neat addition on top of that, but a much more niche use case.
e.g. My colleague writes a document and emails it to me. I open it, print it out, and bring it to Sprout, placing it on the capacitive mat. As I'm reading it, I'm annotating it with pen on paper. Sprout tracks my annotations, digitizes them, and adds them as a digital layer to the original document.
While I'm annotating, my colleague joins the "session" and wants to make more changes and incorporate some of my suggestions. I see that notification, chuck away my piece of paper, and have Sprout project the digital document onto the capacitive pad. While I watch, my colleague makes changes which are live-updated to my document. I see her copy my hand-written notes which have been digitised and OCR'd. She takes my notes, changes the font, and sticks them into one of the paragraphs. Likewise, I can use the stylus to make more annotations that my colleague sees in real-time, or, since the document is digital this time around, I can just edit the paragraphs directly too.
Think Google Wave + Collusion for iPad + the ability to do fairly seamlessly with both digital and physical documents.
[+] [-] rsync|11 years ago|reply
I don't like the lower screen with a projector - then the image is obscured by the shadow your hands make...
[+] [-] richthegeek|11 years ago|reply
The first 40! seconds of the video didn't show the product in action, the first image of it was from such an odd angle that I didn't even know it was an image of it at first, and the later images don't actually show the camera that seems to be an important part of it.
Part of me thinks this is a solution in want of a problem, designed by the kind of person who uses a spoon for soup and a fork for their main course and thinks "If only I had a combination fork-spoon, my life would be so much simpler".
[+] [-] currysausage|11 years ago|reply
Same about the microsite: "We believe hands can do amazing things. What will you do with yours?" - So what is the site about? I scroll down one screen - "Blending the physical and digital worlds that you live in, Sprout unleashes your creativity like never before." - I still got no idea, it's just marketing gibberish.
The visual design is certainly beautiful, but there's a lesson: First of all, tell me what the site is about!
[+] [-] wahsd|11 years ago|reply
What is a bit problematic for me is the position of the projector/camera relative to the monitor. I really don't want to have to extend my arm out to interact through touch. I f-ing hate having to interact with touch at a distance. I don't think it works for extended periods because it puts a strain on your arm.
I would have much more liked a design that allowed you to rotate monitor vertically so the projection/camera surface is off to the side or something. Or maybe they should make the projector/camera surface a separate device.
[+] [-] bentcorner|11 years ago|reply
I'm not convinced either - the demo could have been done with a smartphone app (take a picture, then allow you to manipulate objects via touchscreen).
Maybe there's more depth information that this device can capture that would be difficult to do with a normal camera? Maybe the project can do neat projections onto objects placed underneath it?
Seems like this could find success in specific niches (things needing tactile design?). Not sure if that's where HP wants to go with this.
[+] [-] wfbarks|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mrweasel|11 years ago|reply
I hope they sell the camera part separately, that's the awesome part. The touchscreen doesn't seem to serve a purpose, that would be just as good or better with a mouse or trackpad.
The touch idea is cute, but I don't see the point in touch when there's no tactile feedback.
[+] [-] kbart|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] iwatch00|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] shams93|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] swamp40|11 years ago|reply
They also should have taken a real necklace, placed it on the touchpad and had it instantly digitized, then manually manipulated around the woman's neck.
Very cool product. I love seeing highly imaginative products, especially coming from well established companies.
Suggestion: Maybe whoever was in charge of this development project could push thru that super-cool HP logo and branding that HP was too scared to implement: http://techcrunch.com/2011/12/14/please-save-hp/
[+] [-] Throwaway12830|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] joezydeco|11 years ago|reply
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NKJNxgZyVo0
[+] [-] Xoxox|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] cosmotron|11 years ago|reply
It does look slick though!
[+] [-] coldtea|11 years ago|reply
Which is probably just a demo thing, and nothing that users can or will do in real life.
[+] [-] unwind|11 years ago|reply
Pretty nifty, but also extremely specialized. Daring move!
[+] [-] bjackman|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] xtrumanx|11 years ago|reply
Then I studied the images a little closer. It seems that thing on top the monitor projects an image on the mat on the desktop. The mat seems to be touch sensitive which means you're primary interface is no longer a keyboard/mouse combo but a new interface that will be unique to each application.
Sounds interesting but unless other manufacturers starting selling the same thing, I doubt it'll be widespread enough to attract a large enough group of developers to build apps for it which will probably mean it might be niche product. Still cool though.
[+] [-] nutate|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] schtinky|11 years ago|reply
One would like to believe that the product, if good enough, will always win out, but that's probably not the case, especially if it relies on an ecosystem to develop around it to be fully viable.
If brand quality matters severely, then an interesting question is whether or not startups have an advantage against large corps with bad reputations. Is it better to be StartuppyMcstartup nobody's ever heard of or Microsoft?
[+] [-] michael_h|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Joeri|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] crucialfelix|11 years ago|reply
So in the long run its a good move for them.
[+] [-] VLM|11 years ago|reply
The first thing I thought of was whenever you see something like this, its to goose the stock price. Generic investor types will fall for anything, as generations of AT&T and IBM advertisements have shown. I checked finance.google.com and this must be either very new news or older than a week news.
[+] [-] bndw|11 years ago|reply
[1] http://vimeo.com/89527215
[+] [-] LiweiZ|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jnorthrop|11 years ago|reply
That is really cool, but I can't help but think how limited its uses are. The real-world objects need to be relatively small (like a coffee cup, not a car) and you are limited by taking pictures from the top-down angle. However, that kind of interaction is really natural and would be easier to learn than say Photoshop.
[+] [-] nathannecro|11 years ago|reply
Right now, it's a really niche product, but I'm looking forwards to see if this is improved and adopted more widely.
Also, the main video doesn't show much. This is much better:
http://bcove.me/0mvq74jn
[+] [-] baldfat|11 years ago|reply
I really like the idea of kids putting a physical 3d object into something 2d and build a simple blue print. STEM tool for children seems perfect to me.
HP contact me :)
[+] [-] TheMagicHorsey|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] VLM|11 years ago|reply
"augmented desk" "InteractiveDESK"
This idea is introduced roughly every 4 years at least since the first time I saw it in the early 90s.
There has been some limited commercial success.
The local mall had a 100 sq ft model for kids to play with in one of the walkways. Balls bounce around and react when people walk into them.
Its more or less a kinect with substantial changes in scale and optical path.
[+] [-] Xoxox|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] radnam|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] BlobbyLaMouche|11 years ago|reply
Anyway if I have the opportunity to play with Sprout I will!
[+] [-] kubiiii|11 years ago|reply
I can't predict a mass market destiny to this but it warms my heart to see a huge company release some kind of engineering chimera
3d cam is what is a perfect addition to 3d printers. Well, 3d printers prove pretty useless without 3d cams. It also enables 3d movement detection.
Something bugs me though, how is it possible for the 3d cam to see beneath the object (bird origami) to come out with such a perfectly scanned shape?
[+] [-] superuser2|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ponyous|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] thrwy10|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] zecg|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] drivingmenuts|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] stevenschmatz|11 years ago|reply
Although at first I was a bit skeptical of the replacement of a touchscreen with a projector, there are some capabilities of a projector that you just don't get with a touchscreen – mainly, projecting images on real objects placed on the pad. This, combined with a 3D printer, could allow designers to create 3D shapes and project surfaces onto these objects.
[+] [-] aaronetz|11 years ago|reply
[1] http://idav.ucdavis.edu/~okreylos/ResDev/SARndbox/
[2] https://naturalhistory.novascotia.ca/
[+] [-] matt_morgan|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bsimpson|11 years ago|reply
It had a sensor to detect the depth and positions of your hands above your desk. Its software would then cast a hand-shaped shadow on your screen, so you could see what you were about to interact with. The UI was like a touchscreen, but you'd abstract the touching away from the displaying for ergonomics.
It was a cool concept. Bummed it never went anywhere. Sprout could be interesting, but it would be a lot more interesting if it came from a brand that moved platforms (like Apple). I don't know if HP has the developer mindshare (or sales volume) to have a "revolutionary" product that people get excited about. There are too many other Windows machines (both inside and outside HP) for this to get the attention it deserves.