Situated Research's Blog

OmniTouch turns body parts and nearby surfaces into touch interfaces

Multitouch screens are so versatile and easy to use, why limit them to smartphones and tablets? Researchers have been working for several years to extend multitouch to arbitrary surfaces, but a project called OmniTouch from Microsoft Research and a PhD student at the Human-Computer Interaction Institute at Carnegie Mellon University may bring it closer to reality. Read more »

Maxence Parache’s experimental augmented-reality system lets you detach your point of view from your body.

We take our first-person visual perspective for granted every second of the day — we have to, because our eyeballs are attached to our heads. But what if you could detach your personal “camera angle” at any moment and float away from your own body while still inhabiting it, like an on-demand out-of-body experience? Designer Maxence Paranche has created the next best thing in his HyperReality system, which uses a Microsoft Kinect to scan your physical environment and display it inside a virtual-reality helmet, so you can rotate the visual angle any way you like. Read more »

Image: The avatar for Dr. Brian Ross welcomes participants to an online training session using Xbox chat technology (Stephen Brashear photos/PSBJ)

The sight of a surgeon playing “Grand Theft Auto” in the operating room might raise eyebrows, but it’s one example of how consumer technology is being repurposed to advance the practice of medicine.

Rising medical costs — bloated by expensive, complicated machines — are wrecking the nation’s economic health, while off-the-shelf consumer gadgets keep getting cheaper and more powerful. So the health care industry has discovered it can tap into the innovative wonders of an Xbox 360 or PlayStation 3 or an Android smartphone app. Read more »

A new augmented reality shopping platform for Xbox Kinect will allow users to try on clothes in true 3-D, share photos with friends, and store wish-listed items on smartphones for shopping on-the-go.

Virtual reality shopping just got a lot more real–and could soon become a lot more mainstream. “KinectShop” (working title), an augmented reality shopping platform for the Xbox Kinect, exploits the system’s new finger-recognition technology to allow shoppers to grab items from an unlimited shelf of clothes, see how accessories look at multiple angles, and share the photos with friends on Twitter and Facebook for a quick thumbs-up or down. Read more »

New Nintendo Wii, Star Wars Game Using Microsoft’s Kinect, and PlayStation Vita Portable

Coverage update from the world’s leading video game conference: the E3 Expo in Los Angeles

Situated Research is bringing you the hot news from the world’s largest annual video game conference, the E3 Expo, which began this week in Los Angeles. So far, Nintendo has announced it’s next-generation console, called the Wii U, and Sony has launched a new handheld called the PlayStation Vita. Microsoft has announced some interesting new games for the Kinect, including Star Wars, Disneyland Adventures, and Halo 4. Read more »

You don’t have to look very far to realize that technology is becoming more natural and intuitive. In a typical day, many people use touch or speech to interact with technology on their phones, at the ATM, at the grocery store and in their cars. The learning curve for working with computers is becoming less and less of a barrier thanks to more natural ways to interact. Read more »

Read the manual before using the interface. (Kinect Adventures)
(Yes, it’s a *cute* manual, but these are still instructions to memorize.)

Summary: Inconsistent gestures, invisible commands, overlooked warnings, awkward dialog confirmations. But fun to play.

Kinect is a new video game system that is fully controlled by bodily movements. It’s vaguely similar to the Wii, but doesn’t use a controller (and doesn’t have the associated risk of banging up your living room if you lose your grip on the Wii wand during an aggressive tennis swing). Read more »

Microsoft this week filed a patent application covering a novel way to construct a “tactile” touchscreen – a display that uses technical tricks to convince users they are actually touching the ridges, bumps and textures of a displayed image.

Whereas previous screens produced only an illusion of texture, Microsoft proposes producing a real texture, using pixel-sized shape-memory plastic cells that can be ordered to protrude from the surface on command. Read more »

Not content with turning all manner of surfaces into computers, Microsoft’s researchers are working to turn an entire room into one giant computing surface.

Andy Wilson and his team had already turned a table top, a globe-sized sphere, and a walk-in dome into surface computers. Microsoft also has its Surface, a tabletop computer that it sells for use in places like hotels and restaurants. But with LightSpace–the latest research project–Wilson has turned an entire 10-foot-by-8-foot room into a surface computer. The floor, table, and a wall are all interactive in this latest project, with users able to do things like move an object from one surface to another. Read more »

Technology can transform education by simplifying access to great material, providing new approaches to learning, and offering a framework for assessing student progress and teacher effectiveness. A recent book looks at how technology is being used today and the barriers to change in the future.

Liberating Learning by Terry Moe and John Chubb is an important book that focuses on how technology will change K-12 education in the United States.

It looks at current efforts to use technology for online learning and to measure achievement. Although it acknowledges that there is a need for a lot of improvement, it sees great possibilities. Read more »