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User interfaces: The next generation
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August 09, 2004 (Computerworld) -- PDAs and smart phones are great for keeping the road warrior connected to the extended enterprise, but the technologies have always offered only limited data input capabilities, especially for typing-intensive applications.
San Jose-based Canesta Inc. thinks it may have just the thing to address the problem.
The company has developed a prototype technology that lets users of PDAs and similar mobile devices put data into their handheld systems by simply typing on an image of a standard-size keyboard projected onto a desktop or other surface. The "electronic perception" technology captures the user's finger motions via emitted light photons that form 3-D real-time images that are then processed and translated into keystrokes.
The technology can be integrated into any handheld device and includes a 3-D sensor module, a keyboard-pattern projector and an infrared light source.
Canesta has much more in mind. "Any situation in which a machine or a digital device needs to understand its surroundings is a great application for electronic perception technology," says Jim Spare, a vice president at the company. For example, he says, a future application could be an intelligent car-airbag system that can sense the size and position of an occupant to prevent injury upon deployment.
And Spare says his projection keyboard heralds the way to much more powerful user interfaces that are based on hand gestures. "We'll be able to navigate through databases, especially when you have different sets of data with complex relationships," he says. "You could open up a filing cabinet and pick up a file and sift through it with your fingers, using gestures from your hands as if you were actually picking it out of the file cabinet."
Canesta's technology is part of a growing list of emerging user-interface technologies that are being designed to enable a wider range of human-computer interaction than is possible with traditional mouse- and keyboard-based systems.
Broadly speaking, such technologies are designed to allow computers to accept gestures, motions, speech and facial expressions as data input methods along with the mouse clicks and keystrokes.
Many of these technologies are coming from small companies and are first developed for highly specialized applications. But as the technology matures and costs come down, expect to see it break into broader markets, vendors say.
One example is a gesture recognition system developed for the U.S. Department of Defense by Cybernet Systems Corp. in Ann Arbor, Mich. The technology was developed to facilitate silent troop communication during combat. It allows users to stand in front of a camera-mounted monitor and manipulate images, data and application windows by using specific hand movements from a lexicon of roughly 80 gestures recognized by the system. A San Antonio-based TV station is using a commercial version of the product, called GestureStorm, to control computerized visual effects in its weather reports.
In the future, the technology could be used to enable many new applications, says Charles Cohen, Cybernet's CEO. A drive-up ATM where users could carry out transactions with simple hand gestures instead of leaning out of windows and physically touching buttons is one example, he says. Gesture recognition could be used to control appliances at home—for instance, a TV could turn off automatically if it sensed the viewer in front of it was asleep.
"This technology is not about replacing the keyboard and the mouse but to supplement them," Cohen says. "In 20 years, gesture technologies will be as common as the mouse."
San Jose-based Immersion Corp. makes medical simulators that give users tactile feedback while they're doing surgical simulations. Its LapSim simulator re-creates not just the sights and sounds of the procedure but also how a surgical instrument actually feels in the hands of the surgeon performing the surgery.
"You have many very realistic simulators that don't provide any feedback on how to cut through soft or hard tissue or what needles might feel like when you are pushing it through skin," says Dean Chang, chief technology officer at Immersion.
Over the next few years, expect to see such tactile feedback, or "haptic," technologies find applications in other areas as well, Chang says. For example, cell phones could generate different vibration signatures to tell users who was calling or if the batteries were low.
Haptics could also enable all-in-one medical simulators that would allow doctors to do incredibly realistic, patient-specific rehearsals of complex surgical procedures before performing them, he says.
Automobile dashboards present another future opportunity for haptics, Chang says. Touch screens that generate tactile feedback when images of buttons are depressed could allow users to control entertainment and climate systems more efficiently than they can with today's knobs and buttons, he says.
But getting there will take some doing, the vendors acknowledge. In a few cases, the base capabilities already exist but lack of investor interest is holding back further development. "If someone is prepared to give me the funding, I can deliver some of these things in a year's time," Cohen says. Immersion has licensed its haptics technology to a major cell phone manufacturer but expects it will take at least five years before the technology is broadly integrated into the company's products.
In other cases, the technology needs to mature, Cohen says. For gesture-recognition ATMs to become a reality, more work needs to go into making systems that can work well in outdoor environments with highly cluttered backgrounds. Similarly, Chang says, imaging technologies have to mature a great deal more before the ultrarealistic medical simulator can become a reality.
IN THE LABS
Researchers at MIT are working on a human-computer interface that allows users to interact with computers via eye blinks. The system is designed for use by severely disabled people.
A research project at IBM called Shorthand-Aided Rapid Keyboarding, Shark, uses pattern-recognition technology to enable users to do speed writing on special stylus keyboards.
Everywhere Displays project is another IBM effort aimed at developing systems that allow users to interact with computers using projected touch-screen images.
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