Once, computers were the size of entire rooms. Today, Microsoft Research is turning an entire room into a computer.
Using projectors and sensors, and of course software and hardware, Microsoft’s research arm has developed a system that allows users to interact with multiple display surfaces, transfer files from one screen to another, “manipulate” files and “physically” pass them to each other.
I use quotation marks there because LightSpace uses, well, light to represent files that users can virtually hold in their hands. It’s hard to explain in print, so I recommend watching the video below.
LightSpace uses depth-sensing cameras, like those used in Xbox Kinect and Microsoft Surface, to determine where users’ hands are and what they are trying to do. These sensors can capture the entire room and “see” multiple users at a time.
Really … watch the video.
Here’s some information from Microsoft’s Steve Clayton, who wrote a blog post on LightSpace:
If you’re like me, you’re already thinking about what this could mean in the real world. Imagine boardroom Post-It note exercises becoming completely digital, or in classrooms, students working in teams around a table and then “carrying” their virtual document to the front of the classroom to present. Fashion editors could piece together a magazine from virtual “mood boards” spanning tables and walls and easily make last-minute changes before their print runs. On the coffee table at home you could be reading a digital book and as you touch images on the page, another surface shows related information and videos. It’s exciting to think about the impact this could potentially have on the way we work and live, and even more exciting to think that this is only one of many advancements that are part of the emerging trend of Natural User Interfaces, or NUI.
NUI employs touch, face and voice recognition, movement sensors, our location, context and even our mood to deliver more natural, human interfaces. You may have seen Kinect, which uses depth-sensing cameras similar to LightSpace, and enables gaming that is gesture-driven where you literally are the controller. There are several other NUI products on the market today, but those are really just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to what’s possible. As researchers and developers continue to make advancements in this area, we’ll begin to see products and ideas that we never even thought possible. For example, another idea shown at UIST from Florian Müller, a Microsoft Research Fellowship winner, in affiliation with the University of Melbourne, is “Jogging Over a Distance.” Using spatial audio to enable joggers in Europe and Australia to virtually run together in open terrain, the technology gives the feeling that your running partner is right next to you, slightly behind or ahead depending on their real-time heart rate.
What do you think about this technology and its possible applications for the future?