User interfaces present one of the most interesting quandaries of
modern computing: we’ve moved from big monitors and keyboards to
touchscreens, but now we’re heading into a world of connected everyday
objects and wearable computing — how will we interact with those?
Metaio, the German augmented reality outfit, has an idea.
Augmented reality (AR) involves overlaying virtual imagery and
information on top of the real world — you may be familiar with the
concept of viewing a magazine page through your phone’s camera and
seeing a static ad come to life. Metaio has come up with a way of
creating a user interface on pretty much any surface, by combining
traditional camera-driven AR with thermal imaging.
Essentially, what Metaio is demonstrating with its new “Thermal
Touch” interface concept is an alternative to what a touchscreen does
when you touch it — there, capacitive sensors
know you’ve touched a certain part because they can sense the
electrical charge in your finger; here, an infrared camera senses the
residual heat left by your finger. So, for example, you could use smart
glass to view a virtual chess board on an empty table, then actually
play chess on it:
“Our R&D department had a few thermal cameras that they’d just
received and kind of on a whim they started playing around,” Metaio
spokesman Trak Lord told me. “One researcher noticed that every time he
touched something, it left a very visible heat signature imprint.”
To be clear, a normal camera can do a lot of tracking if it has
sufficiently powerful brains behind it – some of the theoretical
applications shown off by Metaio on Thursday may be partly achievable
without yet another sensor for your tablet or smart glass or whatever.
But there’s a limit to what normal cameras can do when it comes to
tracking interaction with three-dimensional surfaces. As Lord put it,
“the thermal camera adds another dimension of understanding. If you have
a [normal] camera it’s not as precise. The thermal imaging camera can
very clearly see where exactly you’re touching.”
Metaio has a bunch of fascinating use cases to hand: security keypads
that only the user can see; newspaper ads with clickable links;
interactive car manuals that show you what you need to know about a
component when you touch it. But right now this is just R&D – nobody
is putting thermal imaging cameras into their smartphones and wearables
just yet, and Lord reckons it will take at least 5 years before this
sort of thing comes to market, if it ever does.
For now, this is the equipment needed to realize the concept:
Still, when modern mobile devices are already packing tons of
sensors, why not throw in another if it can turn anything into a user
interface? Here’s Metaio’s video, showing what Thermal Touch could do:
Kleiner Perkins investor Mary Meeker's annual presentation on internet trends
is always worth reading in full, which you can do below. But one chart
in her new report particularly caught our eye because it's all about
glass.
As we've argued,
media are best understood as a competition for attention on
glass-panelled devices connected to the internet. Phones, tablets, PCs,
television sets—it's all just glass. But, of course, it does matter what
kinds of glass are attracting more attention.
Meeker's
chart breaks that down nicely‚ with the added benefit of explaining
that the situation varies widely across countries. The US and UK, for
instance, are quite different from Vietnam and Saudi Arabia. Or even
just looking at Indonesia and the Philippines, which spend the most time
staring at screens, provides an interesting comparison.