Multi Touch Interaction
Multi Touch Input Software - in Java as UI
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Exclusive information on Multi Touch Input. See the Video NowSee Video of Amazing Mult-Touch Interaction Technology from NYU Researchers |
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Blog, Incredible Video Screenshots Look at screenshots of video demo of NYU researchers and discuss this new technology's capabilities. |
DiamondSpin, PDH, UbiTable & DiamondSpace DiamondSpin is a tabletop Java tool kit providing a rich set of UI functions for interactive and collaborative document browsing, visualization, manipulation and navigation by small groups of people. DiamondSpin focuses on the study of what affordances an augmented digital table should offer, that can preserve the simplicity and informality of around-the-table interaction. Currently, DiamondSpin runs on both conventional mouse-&-keyboard based systems, as well as on the multi-user multi-touch input surface of DiamondTouch. DiamondTouch is a novel multi-touch input technology enabling significantly more interactions than conventional input devices. Most noticeably, up to four users can simultaneously operate on the table. Additionally, each user is not limited to a single point of contact. This is drastically different from the sequential turn taking that arises when people use traditional input devices.
In PDH, we created a new type of interface addressing many issues. One of PDH’s primary focuses is on developing content organization and retrieval methods that are simple and understandable for the users, and can be used without distracting them from their conversation. Rather than a folder&file mechanism, PDH organizes the contents along the four W's of storytelling (Who, When, Where, and What), and allows users to design new contexts for organizing their structures. A second issue we have focused on is affording casual and exploratory interaction with data by combining a multiplicity of user interaction mechanisms including tabletop pop-up menus, direct manipulation, natural visual query formulation with minimal menu-driven interaction and freeform digital ink strokes. Finally, in order to support the multi- threaded and non-linear progression of group conversation, PDH provides tools to help people navigate a conversation as well as their content. (See www.merl.com/projects/PDH/) UbiTable (www.merl.com/projects/UbiTable/) is a study on interface design for walk-up usage of interactive tabletops. In particular, UbiTable allows users to dynamically connect their personal laptops, cameras and USB devices to an interactive tabletop, so that people can fluidly share, manipulate, exchange and mark up data on a shared large tabletop surface. At the same time, each user can still maintain explicit control over the accessibility of his own documents displayed on the tabletop. The affordances are very much like when they bring personal paper documents to a meeting. DiamondSpace (www.merl.com/projects/dspace) is our ongoing effort in researching how multiple interactive display surfaces, including multi-touch multi-user tabletops, electronic walls, and laptop/desktop displays, can be used in concert to create flexible visualization and problem solving spaces in which people can explore, understand, utilize and manipulate information from many data sources and types. Fluid interaction and meaningful visualization are the key for multi-surface, multi- device, interactive spaces to become the users' true cognitive prosthesis. Such interactive environments are suitable for a variety of application domains, including collaborative business and work spaces, emergency response and mission control centers, urban planning rooms, as well as geospatial visualization and analysis. Research on collaboration with interactive tables is still in its infancy. We are concurrently working on many new exciting research challenges that still lie ahead, including gestural and multimodal interaction techniques, understanding the visual and cognitive benefits of large horizontal interactive surfaces, as well as a basic taxonomy of how the different interactive surfaces should relate with each other under varied application scenrions.