Cool Stuff I Found This Week – That You Have to See to Believe

In the course of preparing a presentation on the weekend that had a component of Microsoft Futures, I came across some very cool things that we are doing in the UI space.

You’ve no doubt heard of Microsoft Surface……the revolutionary multi-touch computer that responds to natural hand gestures and real-world objects.  Leave the mouse and keyboard behind.

But, have you heard about the Mobile Surface? 

Mobile Surface is a Microsoft Research project to create a novel interaction system for mobile computing. Their goal is to bring the Microsoft Surface experience to mobile scenarios, and more importantly, to enable 3D interaction with mobile devices. They do research on how to transform any surface (e.g., a coffee table or a piece of paper) to a Mobile Surface with a mobile device and a camera-projector system. Besides this, their work also includes how to get a 3D object model in real-time, augmented reality and multiple-layer 3D information presentation.

Check out a prototype demo here: https://channel9.msdn.com/TechFest/Mobile-Surface/

Next I found the Cloud Mouse, which aside from just sounding cool, will enable users to orchestrate, interact with, and engage with their data as if they were inside the cloud.

According to Microsoft Research: “With cloud computing, users can access their personal data anywhere and anytime. Cloud computing will also enable new forms of data to be provided for users, with applications ranging from Web data mining to social networks. But cloud computing necessitates new interaction metaphors and input-output technology. The cloud mouse is one such technology. Every user will have one. It will be a secure key to every user’s cloud data. And, with six degrees of freedom and with tactile feedback, the cloud mouse will enable users to orchestrate, interact with, and engage with their data as if they were inside the cloud.”

Check out a prototype demo here: https://channel9.msdn.com/TechFest/Inside-the-Cloud-New-Cloud-Computing-Interaction/

Thinking it couldn’t get much cooler I was pretty excited to stumble across the latest developments in Natural User Interfaces: Skinput and Muscle-Computer Interfaces.  Microsoft has innovated continually in developing novel interaction modalities, or natural user interfaces. Surface and Project Natal are two examples. While these modalities rely on sensors and devices situated in the environment, researchers believe there is a need for new modalities that enhance the mobile experience. As such they are taking advantage of sensing technologies that enable them to decode the signals generated by the body.

Skinput is designed using bio-acoustic interfaces, mechanical sensors on the body that enable researchers to turn the entire body into a tap-based input device.  This approach provides an always available, naturally portable, and on-body finger input system

Check out a VERY cool prototype demo here: https://research.microsoft.com/en-us/um/redmond/groups/cue/skinput/

In the same vein, Microsoft Research is also working on a project  using electromyography-based armbands that sense muscular activation directly to infer finger gestures on surfaces and in free space, called Muscle-Computer Interaction.

Check out another very cool prototype demo here: https://research.microsoft.com/en-us/um/redmond/groups/cue/muci/

Last but not least on the Microsoft Research front is the Translating Phone.  Soon the language barrier will no longer be an issue. This piece of technology allows two users, speaking different languages, to communicate instantly. The speakers audio is turned into text, then that text is translated into another language and spoken aloud to the other party in the conversation. This could truly change the world.

Check out the prototype demo here: https://channel9.msdn.com/posts/LauraFoy/TechFest-2010-Translating-Telephone/

Microsoft Research have a lot of other cool projects they are working on that I recommend you take a look at, a good summary (with videos) of those demo’ed at TechFest 2010 is here: https://research.microsoft.com/en-us/events/techfest2010/videos.aspx

Apologies for over-using the word “cool” in this post…..couldn’t be helped.