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Microsoft Research's shoulder mounted system makes anything a multitouch display
Remember the nifty new 3D transparent display, augmented reality mirror, and remote sharing technology that Microsoft revealed just over a week ago? Turns out that Redmond's research arm wasn't done doling out the gadget goodies, as it's now showing off a new Wearable Multitouch Projector that turns any surface into a gesture-sensitive display. Using Kinect-style motion and depth sensing cameras in concert with a pico projector and a PC, you can tap, swipe and pinch-to-zoom to your heart's content on the nearest flat surface. It's currently a rather clunky, cabled contraption, but the touch input does appear to work pretty well, and the researchers who built it think that the tech can be miniaturized to a more user-friendly size in the future. See for yourself in the video after the break.
Microsoft TechForum unveils three research projects (video)
TechForum is a Microsoft-sponsored shindig where the company can get together, party, and then show off its latest and greatest research projects. First up we've got a transparent interactive 3D display which builds on technology from Cambridge University's HoloDesk project. Next is Holoflector, a "magic mirror" that overlays LCD projections onto your reflection. Both of these two projects rely heavily upon Kinect as more projects find the potential in the little sensor. Finally there's Illumishare, a pair of overhead projectors / cameras that share a desktop space with a colleague when you need to look at the same thing. After the break you can see all three concepts in action and you can learn a little more about each at our source links.[Thanks, Lokitoth]
Microsoft working on Vermeer, a 'touchable' 360-degree holographic display (video)
Touchable is a stretch when talking about Vermeer, but we'd definitely call it interactive. Instead of hiding the 360-degree display under an acrylic or glass dome it uses a parabolic reflector to float a 3D "object" in space and tracks hand motions with an IR sensor or Kinect. It's not unlike RePro3D, but with slightly less bulky hardware. Don't take our word for it though, check out the video after the break.
Tired of your face? Use Face Swap to try your friend's on for size
Have you ever wondered what it would be like to find your face on somebody else's body, or vice versa? Microsoft Research has finally addressed that oh-so-critical need with a Windows Phone app called Face Swap. Essentially, the free app can take an image of multiple people and trade faces with the others in the group, and then let you share the new photo on Facebook or Twitter. Of course, we're not sure the person you swapped faces with will enjoy it as much as you did, but that's the downfall of social networks, right?
Trio of Microsoft projectors lets you get quasi-physical with AR interaction (video)
You have to hand it to the tireless folks toiling away within Microsoft's Research department. They're hard at the task of making tomorrowland today's province. Perhaps spurred on by the rapturous response to their HoloDesk, the Cambridge gang's previewing yet another virtual reality, and this time it's a handheld trio. The palm-friendly devices, split up into camera, room and SLAM models, incorporate pico projectors, coaxial IR cameras, inertial measurement units (IMUs) and the company's Kinect (for the latter two only) to project augmented visions onto surrounding surfaces. If you've been honing your shadow puppetry game over the years, that oft-used skill's about to get very useful. The environmentally aware (no, not the Go Green! kind) systems allow for shadow- and touch-based interaction with the CG overlays, offering pinch functionality, icon selection and even painting -- don't worry, it's definitely removable. This neat tech hat trick could one day soon spare you a trip to IKEA, letting you test out potential decorative pieces from the comfort of your home. Unfortunately, we can't get handsy with the futuristic projectors just yet, so the video after the break will have to suffice. [Thanks, Pradeep]
Holodesk: More Kinect magic from Microsoft Research
There are a lot of conspiracy theorists at Joystiq that attribute the human race's breathtakingly rapid technological advancement to ancient aliens, claiming that world-changing inventions like polymers, optical media and the Internet have all been reverse engineered from downed extraterrestrial spacecraft. In actuality, very few modern conveniences can trace their roots back to ancient aliens; most mind-bending breakthroughs come from abstract corporate think-tanks like Microsoft Research. The lab that previously utilized a Kinect to create real-time 3D models has now developed an interactive, holographic 3D environment called Holodesk. As is demonstrated in the (strangely silent) proof of concept video above, Holodesk uses a Kinect, projector and beam splitter to create interactive holograms. In a nutshell, the Kinect watches your hands and face, tracking their movements and projecting 3D shapes onto a semi-transparent surface above your hands, tricking the eye into thinking the shapes and your hand exist on the same plane. The interface is still fairly rough, graphically speaking, but the technology itself is so solid, we're hoping it'll eventually lead to a Kinect sequel to Time Traveler.
Microsoft HoloDesk: when you need to juggle something that isn't there (video)
If you'd thought that OmniTouch and PocketTouch were the end of Microsoft Research's natural user interface projects, think again. It's now released a video of the HoloDesk, a tool that lets you manipulate virtual 3D objects with your bare hands. Looking through a transparent display, the objects react nearly instantly, rolling from a sheet of real paper into a real cup and falling into shadow if you block the virtual light-source. The Cambridge lab that developed the tool sees uses in remote working, collaboration or device prototyping. If you hadn't guessed, there's a hacked Kinect at the heart of HoloDesk's DNA, which makes us wonder how long it'll be before we can use it to play Halo.
OmniTouch projection interface makes the world your touchscreen (video)
Sometimes you just want to make notes on your forearm. Put that permanent marker down though, because PhD student Chris Harrison et al at Microsoft Research have created a new system that allows touchscreen interaction on hairy and uneven surfaces. It uses a short-range depth camera instead of the infrared sensor we've seen on similar devices, which allows it to gauge the viewing angle and other characteristics of surfaces being used -- and it can even handle pinch-to-zoom. There's a video after the break, if you fancy a bit of wall-based digital finger painting.
Microsoft's PocketTouch prototype is like x-ray vision for your fingers (video)
Is it more gauche to pull out your phone in the middle of a date, or to draw a bunch of crop circles on your pants? That's the question we were asking ourselves after coming across PocketTouch -- a new Microsoft Research prototype that lets you manipulate your handset without ever removing it from your pocket. Developed by researchers Scott Saponas, Chris Harrison and Hrvoje Benko, the device essentially consists of a customized, multitouch capacitive sensor hooked on to the back of a smartphone. This sensor is capable of picking up gestures through fabric, allowing users to execute a wide array of eyes-free, gesture-based functions (including simple swipes and alphanumeric text) without ever having to actually whip out their phones. To do this, the team implemented what it calls an "orientation-defining unlock gesture," which helps the prototype get its bearings, before testing the capacitive sensors across different fabrics. According to Microsoft, the outcome "exceeded expectations," though there's no word on when or if this Goliath of a device could ever hit the mainstream. Head past the break to see a video of a man playing tic-tac-toe on his pants.
Microsoft Research celebrates 20 years of crazy innovation
Microsoft Research was founded way back in 1991 as a way of turning cutting edge concepts into products. Over the years, the division has been behind some of the most exciting ideas that have come out of Redmond, from fluffy mice to HIV / AIDS research. The department is celebrating its 20th anniversary by highlighting some of its favorite projects over the next four weeks, so we're beating it to the punch with some of picks. Check out our list below.
KinectFusion HQ creates 3D models from your surroundings
We've seen people do some pretty awesome stuff with the Kinect that expands the peripheral's applications beyond the realm of controlling games, but we've yet to see anything that matches the wide-reaching implications of Microsoft Research's KinectFusion HQ concept. Using the Kinect's dual cameras, KinectFusion HQ can construct an accurate, high-quality 3D representation of an entire room in a matter of seconds. The longer the Kinect has to look at a specific object, the more detailed that object then becomes; able to accurately scan and render millimeter differences in texture. Once the room is rendered, the model can then be interacted with in real time, which the above (oddly silent) tech demo demonstrates in increasingly wild and mind-blowing ways. Since the Kinect is typically thought of as a stationary object, it will be interesting to see how this technology may eventually be implemented into gaming, since its primary functionality relies on moving the unit around the space you're scanning.
Microsoft Surface-controlled robots to boldly go where rescuers have gone before (video)
Ready to get hands-on in the danger zone -- from afar? That's precisely what an enterprising team of University of Massachusetts Lowell researchers are working to achieve with a little Redmond-supplied assistance. The Robotics Lab project, dubbed the Dynamically Resizing Ergonomic and Multi-touch (DREAM) Controller, makes use of Microsoft's Surface and Robotics Developer Studio to deploy and coordinate gesture-controlled search-and-rescue bots for potentially hazardous emergency response situations. Developed by Prof. Holly Yanco and Mark Micire, the tech's Natural User Interface maps a virtual joystick to a user's fingertips, delegating movement control to one hand and vision to the other -- much like an Xbox controller. The project's been under development for some time, having already aided rescue efforts during Hurricane Katrina, and with future refinements, could sufficiently lower the element of risk for first responders. Head past the break for a video demonstration of this life-saving research.
Researchers demo 3D face scanning breakthroughs at SIGGRAPH, Kinect crowd squarely targeted
Lookin' to get your Grown Nerd on? Look no further. We just sat through 1.5 hours of high-brow technobabble here at SIGGRAPH 2011, where a gaggle of gurus with IQs far, far higher than ours explained in detail what the future of 3D face scanning would hold. Scientists from ETH Zürich, Texas A&M, Technion-Israel Institute of Technology, Carnegie Mellon University as well as a variety of folks from Microsoft Research and Disney Research labs were on hand, with each subset revealing a slightly different technique to solving an all-too-similar problem: painfully accurate 3D face tracking. Haoda Huang et al. revealed a highly technical new method that involved the combination of marker-based motion capture with 3D scanning in an effort to overcome drift, while Thabo Beeler et al. took a drastically different approach. Those folks relied on a markerless system that used a well-lit, multi-camera system to overcome occlusion, with anchor frames acting as staples in the success of its capture abilities. J. Rafael Tena et al. developed "a method that not only translates the motions of actors into a three-dimensional face model, but also subdivides it into facial regions that enable animators to intuitively create the poses they need." Naturally, this one's most useful for animators and designers, but the first system detailed is obviously gunning to work on lower-cost devices -- Microsoft's Kinect was specifically mentioned, and it doesn't take a seasoned imagination to see how in-home facial scanning could lead to far more interactive games and augmented reality sessions. The full shebang can be grokked by diving into the links below, but we'd advise you to set aside a few hours (and rest up beforehand). %Gallery-130390%
Microsoft's designing women want to dress you up in wearable tech love (video)
Microsoft's no slouch when it comes to market expansion, with personal computing, mobile and even gaming under its Redmond wing -- but fashion? Well, it's time for pigs to fly because two of MS' very own took home Best Concept and Best in Show for their Printing Dress creation at the 15th Annual International Symposium on Wearable Computers. The dress, created by MS Research's Asta Roseway and the Xbox division's Sheridan Martin Small, incorporates a laptop, projector, four circuit boards and laser-cut, typewriter-shaped buttons into a black and white rice paper design. Wondering what all the gadgetry is for? Stressing the need for accountability in our age of anonymous, digital communication, the duo's winning entry aims to have us all wearing what we tweet -- literally, as messages typed via the bodice-sewn keys display on the gown's lower half. It might seem a far-fetched goal now, but these "eRenaissance women" hope to lure tech back from the "cold, unyielding" brink and into the warmth of a "human age." Jump past the break for a video peek at this ethical couture.
Microsoft's KinectFusion research project offers real-time 3D reconstruction, wild AR possibilities
It's a little shocking to think about the impact that Microsoft's Kinect camera has had on the gaming industry at large, let alone the 3D modeling industry. Here at SIGGRAPH 2011, we attended a KinectFusion research talk hosted by Microsoft, where a fascinating new look at real-time 3D reconstruction was detailed. To better appreciate what's happening here, we'd actually encourage you to hop back and have a gander at our hands-on with PrimeSense's raw motion sensing hardware from GDC 2010 -- for those who've forgotten, that very hardware was finally outed as the guts behind what consumers simply know as "Kinect." The breakthrough wasn't in how it allowed gamers to control common software titles sans a joystick -- the breakthrough was the price. The Kinect took 3D sensing to the mainstream, and moreover, allowed researchers to pick up a commodity product and go absolutely nuts. Turns out, that's precisely what a smattering of highly intelligent blokes in the UK have done, and they've built a new method for reconstructing 3D scenes (read: real-life) in real-time by using a simple Xbox 360 peripheral. The actual technobabble ran deep -- not shocking given the academic nature of the conference -- but the demos shown were nothing short of jaw-dropping. There's no question that this methodology could be used to spark the next generation of gaming interaction and augmented reality, taking a user's surroundings and making it a live part of the experience. Moreover, game design could be significantly impacted, with live scenes able to be acted out and stored in real-time rather than having to build something frame by frame within an application. According to the presenter, the tech that's been created here can "extract surface geometry in real-time," right down to the millimeter level. Of course, the Kinect's camera and abilities are relatively limited when it comes to resolution; you won't be building 1080p scenes with a $150 camera, but as CPUs and GPUs become more powerful, there's nothing stopping this from scaling with the future. Have a peek at the links below if you're interested in diving deeper -- don't be shocked if you can't find the exit, though. %Gallery-130263%
Microsoft Research's .NET Gadgeteer steps out into the light, shoots daggers at Arduino (video)
Arduino, meet .NET Gadgeteer -- your newest homebrew hacking rival. Born from Microsoft Research engineers' desire to build prototypes quickly and easily, the two-and-a-half-years in the making ARM7-powered mainboard packs 4MB Flash, 16MB RAM, Ethernet, WiFi, an SD card interface and USB ports. Novice mods might wanna put the Netduino down because this homespun alternative also runs atop MS' .NET Micro Framework, and thanks to its IntelliSense feature, makes auto-coding a breeze for first-timers. If you're interested in what Ballmer & co. are offering, you can head to the project's site now to pre-order its GHI-made hardware: a $250 Spider Starter Kit and the $120 Spider Mainboard. Both will be available by the end of September, but if you need a preview of what this burgeoning open source community has to offer, peep the stop-motion making mod after the break.
Microsoft Research-backed e-reader prototype can't keep its text to itself (video)
We've seen plenty of dual-screen devices over the past couple of years, and they never fail to make us a little sentimental for Microsoft's stillborn Courier concept. That goes double for this reader device, which made an appearance at this week's CHI conference in Vancouver, seeing as how Microsoft Research apparently played a role in its development. But this gadget, presented by the University of Maryland's Nicholas Chen, is clearly its own beast -- and it's an awesome looking one at that. The reader actually only has one screen, but it can connect wirelessly with other units, letting the users do things like send links between devices. It will also clip magnetically to another unit, so you can look at two pages of the same document at the same time, just like one of those oldfangled book-type things. Fans of awkward intros, check out the video after the break. [Thanks, Winston]
Microsoft motion controller concept kicks sand in Kinect's puny face
Think your body's a temple? Turns out it's actually just the antenna the temple's staff uses to watch football when they're done praying. A group of engineers from Microsoft Research showcased a technology at Vancouver's Conference on Human Factors in Computing that offers gesture-based control on a scale that could make the company's Kinect controller downright laughable. The team demonstrated how it could harness the human body's reception of electromagnetic noise to create gesture-based computer interaction that does away with the need for a camera -- though a receiver is worn on the body (the neck, in this case). The system uses the unique signals given off in different parts of the home to help measure the interaction, effectively turning one's walls into giant control pads, which can regulate things like lighting and the thermostat. Hopefully games, too, because we can't wait to play Pac-Man with our bedrooms.
Microsoft's Rock and Rails touchscreen lets you massage your photos with both hands
If you ever get tired of poking away at your smartphone's screen like a doorbell, you're not alone. The forward-looking folks over at Microsoft Research have been working away at a new touchscreen system designed pick up on more natural, whole-hand movements, effectively allowing users to break free from the finger-based paradigm that governs most tactile devices. Developed in coordination with engineers at Microsoft Surface, the company's Rock and Rails interface can detect three basic hand gestures: a balled fist, which holds items on the screen, an extended hand that can align objects (see the cell marked "d," on the right) and a curved paw, around which users can pivot images (see cell b). This taxonomy opens up new ways for users to crop, re-size or generally play around with their UI elements, though it remains unclear whether the display will trickle down to the consumer level anytime soon. For now, it appears to operate exclusively on the Surface, but more details should surface when the system's developers release a paper on their project, later this year. Hit the source links to see a video of the thing in action.
Microsoft's Bill Buxton exhibits gadget collection 35 years in the making
You don't get to be Microsoft's Principal Researcher without a strong sense of technology and design history, and Bill Buxton certainly has plenty of evidence to show he's well qualified in that respect. That swath of devices pictured above is just a sample of the impressive gadget collection Buxton has amassed over the past 35 years, which he is now exhibiting in public for the first time at a conference in Vancouver, British Columbia this week. Not able to check it out in person? Then you can thankfully settle for the next best thing, as Microsoft Research has also put the entire collection online, complete with Buxton's own notes for each of the items (which range from Etch-a-Sketches to watches to a range of different input devices). Hit up the source link below to start browsing.
