Touchscreen interface for seamless data transfer between the real and virtual worlds

Fujitsu Laboratories has developed a next generation user interface which can accurately detect the users finger and what it is touching, creating an interactive touchscreen-like system, using objects in the real word. Using this technology, information can be imported from a document as data, by selecting the necessary parts with your finger.

This technology measures the shape of real-world objects, and automatically adjusts the coordinate systems for the camera, projector, and real world. In this way, it can coordinate the display with touching, not only for flat surfaces like tables and paper, but also for the curved surfaces of objects such as books.

California start-up brings deft touch to virtual reality

Silicon Valley start-up, zSpace, has produced a virtual 3D display its founders say will revolutionize the way people interact with computers. The system gives three-dimensional form to virtual objects and allows users to manipulate those objects as if they were real.

Touchscreen studio lighting control system

This prototype stage lighting control panel features a touch display which can be used to easily adjust the color and brightness of LED lights. It was presented by Toshiba Lighting & Technology Corporation at InterBEE 2012. Colors can be selected using a software palette and color picker, and multiple lights can be controlled in sequence by swiping the lighting icons.

Fleksy – Happy Typing

Fleksy is a revolutionary technology which makes typing text on a touch-screen easy. Ever dreamt of an auto-correct system powerful enough to work even when you don’t look at the screen? Yes, it’s possible.

In fact, Fleksy is being used today by the blind and visually impaired to type faster and easier than many sighted people. It is set to revolutionize the way people think about mobile devices and to challenge the traditional barriers in touch-screen typing for everyone.

Featuring Syntellia’s patent pending technologies, Fleksy uses the familiar QWERTY layout, coupled with probably the most powerful text prediction engine out there. Tap typing, re-invented. It is a new experience and a leap forward in mobile computing and the ability to use touch-screen device for content creation by everyone.

Monotype and MIT AgeLab Study Links Type Style with Reduced Driver Distraction Risk

Touchscreens are becoming the new car dashboard. They are also new to most drivers, often busy to look at and fussy to operate, giving the commuting world new distractions.

Now, researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology say something as simple as a better typeface on screens can significantly decrease the potential distraction of car touchscreens.

Social Media Week Supports Alternative Education

Skillshare, the learning marketplace where anyone can learn anything from anyone else willing to teach, is teaming up with Social Media Week to launch the School of Emerging Media and Technology. 

Facial Recognition Tech Comes to Sony Online Games

A precise facial recognition technology usually reserved for Hollywood animations is coming to PC-based video games. Sony’s David Georgeson demonstrates how it works.

Tactus technology allows physical buttons to rise from a touchscreen

What if buttons could morph out of the surface of your device? Tactus Technology has developed a new tactile user interface for touchscreen devices that does exactly that. Tactus provides a new dimension to touchscreens by enabling real, physical buttons that rise up from the surface on demand, and then recede back into the screen, leaving a perfectly flat, transparent surface when gone.

Penn Engineers Replicate the Sense of Touch

Haptics is a field of engineering that is focused on replicating the sense of touch. Simulating the feeling of a surface could make for more immersive entertainment, more edifying educational tools, or more realistic training devices.

Katherine Kuchenbecker, the Skirkanich Assistant Professor of Innovation in the department of Mechanical Engineering and Applied Mechanics in Penn’s School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, is pushing the field of haptics forward with something she calls “haptography.”

IBM’s New Smart Floor

Originally filed in 2009, IBM’s smart floor patent outlines a multi-touch surface system that not only knows where you are at a given moment but also how you’re feeling. This personalized touch will track where you are, identifying with the shape on the individual. The perceived advantages seen immediately are the use of it in hospitals for smart surveillance and medical monitoring. One wonders if they will incorporate mobile apps within the floor for access to quick information, like other smart technologies.