Augmented Reality : Fujitsu touch interface on real world objects

Do you remember Microsoft pixel sense (formerly known as Microsoft surface). big table like structure with an interactive surface computing platform that allows one or more people to use touch and real world objects, and share digital content at the same time. The PixelSense platform consists of software and hardware products that combine vision based multitouch PC hardware, 360-degree multiuser application design, and windows software to create a Natural user interface (NUI).

Few years back, I had chance to work on some application using Microsoft surface. It was indeed awesome experience to create some thing like multitouch, multiuser interface.Recently Fujitsu lab. developed similar but cheaper and versatile device.

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.

Paper and many other objects could be manipulated by touching them, as with touch screen. This system doesn't use any special hardware; it consists of just a device like an ordinary webcam and a projector and Image processing.

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.

To detect touch accurately, the system needs to detect fingertip height accurately. In particular, with the low-resolution camera used here (320 x 180), if fingertip detection is off by a single pixel, the height changes by 1 cm. So, the system requires technology for recognizing fingertips with high precision.

I can only imagine how and where these kind of technologies will be useful in our life.

For example,  this system could be used to show detailed information at a travel agent's counter, or when you need to fill in forms at City Hall.

 If you think of some ideas where this kind of devices be useful  please comment it. I will compile the list of your ideas and we will make a separate post about it what do u think?