Microsoft Surface made pressure-sensitive with Wii Balance Board

So you've got a spare Microsoft Surface and Wii Balance Board laying around, whaddya do? Well, you could try stacking them on top of each other and hope that big-ass table doesn't crush your little plastic Nintendo toy, and with some code slapped on what you'd end up with is pressure-sensitive surface computing. This clever little concept was cooked up by Josh Santangelo from "Stimulant." In his demo, featured after the break, he rocks Surface from side to side while colored spots roll back and forth, using a physics engine he developed for MS Silverlight. It's a great start and we would love to see this resourceful hack put to good use -- beyond that of a totally awesome yet ridiculously expensive tilt-a-maze game, minus the maze.

[octoberasian @ Oct 3rd 2008 4:14AM]

That was just... cool! O.o

Simple, effective, yet impressive.

[Holger @ Oct 3rd 2008 4:34AM]

Hehe lovely...

gotta love people pushing new devices and thinking of new applications for existing stuff...

[j_g_puff @ Oct 3rd 2008 4:51AM]

MS should have been able to integrate this into Surface themselves - they missed out on a trick there!

[BigD145 @ Oct 3rd 2008 11:37AM]

With the long line of digitizers out there, making Surface pressure sensitive should have been obvious.

[Jagster @ Oct 3rd 2008 1:44PM]

It doesn't look like he made it pressure sensitive, but tilt sensitive instead. This adds some funtionality to certain applications but certainly is not part of the Surface intention. Surface was designed as a way to handle multiple inputs on it's surface which is what it does. With that core structure, it's very easy to add 3rd dimention add-ons very easily.

[Shinigami @ Oct 3rd 2008 4:53AM]

How to put it to good use? Easy. Make it run World Of Goo! xD
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-A_JfkzPwww
Would be much more fun playing on multi-touch table with friends.

[Benson @ Oct 3rd 2008 4:56AM]

Very cool hack, and excellent demo of it.

[ZaxCG2 @ Oct 3rd 2008 8:02AM]

You could hardly call it a hack. Its more like just good programming skillz. But I guess you could call it a hack if that sounds cooler.

[Andir3.0 @ Oct 3rd 2008 10:11AM]

Hacking is programming as spelunking is to cave exploring.

[SonyPS3Sucks @ Oct 3rd 2008 5:06AM]

O.o interesting!

[CJ @ Oct 3rd 2008 6:07AM]

I can see a lot of potential for something like this, espeically when Surface gets bigger (that is, larger in size).

Picture this, you're sitting in a board room with all your major clientele, and you need to give a document to someone on the opposite end of a many metre long surface table. You bring up the document, lift the table slightly, and BAM, it's sliding down to the other end, for the other end to recieve.

Okay, it's not the greatest example in the world, but the point still stands that this would make a good product even better, get on it Redmond!

[aatnet @ Oct 3rd 2008 6:26AM]

u're kidding right? That would cause all other documents to slide as well :-)

[Martin Andreas @ Oct 3rd 2008 7:41AM]

HAHAHA! You must be kidding! Your exsample could just as easily (or even easier) be done by giving each seat its own button. When you pressed the button the document would "slide" over to you. What I mean is, that you don't need presurized tables for that function. There are definately many possibilities with this function, but I wouldn't invest to much in that idea...

What COULD be done is to make games out of it (which he kinda demoed there on the video). But otherwise I don't think this is so much different to accelerometers.

Martin Andreas

[Gilad @ Oct 3rd 2008 9:47AM]

I can't lift a conference table :)
But if I can push or "fling" the document over (think of passing an air hockey paddle), that could be cool.
The guy on the other side can grab it while it's moving so I don't have to aim.

I dunno.. I don't really see myself pushing down on a table...

[Benson @ Oct 3rd 2008 12:01PM]

Yes, indeed he's kidding with that particular example. It would be a fun (for 15 minutes), but pointless way of transferring documents down a table; the real thing is definitely to airhockey them.

But it would be good for something, I'm sure.

[iHoppipolla @ Oct 3rd 2008 10:53AM]

Is it just me or does a Surface with an accelerometer seem scary?

Watch out! Big Ass Table sliding your way...

[Irwin @ Oct 3rd 2008 8:53AM]

How is that "pressure sensitive"?

[Ryan @ Oct 3rd 2008 11:09AM]

it isn't. i think maybe the writer of the article got confused by the growing bubbles (which grew due to duration of touch, not pressure applied)

an accelerometer isn't going to help with pressure sensing, having a flexible touch matrix on the screen would, or simply using pressure sensing stylii to do your navigating

[ScareyJ @ Oct 3rd 2008 11:54AM]

The pressure sensors are in the Wii Balance Board not the screen ... circle growth is a factor of time, but the table tilting a vector based on the pressure sensors in the board.

[Jon Biddell @ Oct 4th 2008 3:52AM]

I just wish Microsoft would stop taking credit for the work of others - Jeff Han of MIT invented this technology years ago.

Once again, M$ trying to rip someone else off.

[Gilad @ Oct 3rd 2008 9:49AM]

I've seen a lot of these kinds of "surface" screen type contraptions (including some open source examples from a few years ago, but they were done with a projector and an IR camera...)

AFAIK they're the first to make this a commercial product.

[burnblue @ Oct 3rd 2008 10:28AM]

I'm tired of hearing this. Microsoft didn't steal anything from Han, the technologies even work differently.

You think they saw his TED talk and just hobbled together some multitouch out of Vista in a couple of months?

[azz0r @ Oct 3rd 2008 10:35AM]

Oh please everyones always ripping someone off.

Its just cooler to come down on Microsoft more for it.

Pfft.

[burnblue @ Oct 3rd 2008 10:28AM]

Microsoft, please hire him.

[dghughes @ Oct 3rd 2008 11:14AM]

Not to get too far off topic but I've often wondered why, or if, an iPhone or an Nokia N95 couldn't use their three way accelerometers to be made to detect touch or pressure. You have three axis to work with and a touch could be seen as a quick change in direction as in a touch, it should work for any area on the surface. Monitor could be made with accelerometers built into them and simple software be written to make any monitor into a touch screen without the need for special overlay lenses or other detection devices.

[Benson @ Oct 3rd 2008 11:58AM]

To start with, you'd need a good model of the mounting; so pivoting monitor stands are definitely a no-go. (And don't even think about modeling the stiffness of a user's arm/wrist/hand/grip on a portable!) With a nice rigid stand, it could work, sort of, but they measure acceleration, and since you can't integrate it without a ton of noise, you'd only be able to do taps, not sliding around and such. And resolution would be pathetic, even for finger usage.

And the accelerometers probably cost about as much as a cheap resistive touchscreen layer that you can slap on the front of the monitor and get better results.

Not impossible, or even unfeasible, but there's better options for most applications.

[josh @ Oct 3rd 2008 12:26PM]

Hey -- thanks for the link and all the kind comments. Of course this is just a fun demo and not really a concept for a real application.

One thing that the article gets wrong is that it's a WPF application, not Silverlight. Close enough though. :)

[BoB F @ Oct 3rd 2008 8:28PM]

MS must be getting serious about getting this out, they're hiring just for it:

http://members.microsoft.com/careers/search/results.aspx?FromCP=Y&JobCategoryCodeID=&JobLocationCodeID=&JobProductCodeID=&JobTitleCodeID=10110&Divisions=&TargetLevels=&Keywords=&JobCode=&ManagerAlias=&Interval=10