Scratching The Surface: Multitouch Computing
Microsoft calls it Surface computing. Surface is a collaborative and interactive environment where users can reach out and touch digital content with their hands. The technology is evolutionary because it will change the way people interact with computers.
Solution providers still have to wait one or two more years before Microsoft releases Surface to all of its partners, but the Redmond, Wash., company has announced four partnerships already: T-Mobile USA, Bellevue, Wash.; Harrah's Entertainment, Las Vegas; Starwood Hotels and Resorts Worldwide, White Plains, N.Y. and IGT, Reno, Nevada. Those partners have exclusive rights to build applications for the Surface table and redefine the way the technology can be used in their businesses.
Microsoft is gearing up to deploy its multitouch Surface technology this spring and it comes with a $5,000 to $10,000 price tag. Microsoft is first focusing on the leisure entertainment and retail market—for instance, Harrah's can use the Surface table to develop new casino games. Likewise, Starwood Hotels can implement interactive help desks, allowing hotel guests to plan their local activities without having to rely solely on hotel staff. The Surface table might even show up in hotel rooms with all sorts of applications to entertain guests. As it stands, the Surface table works well in large open sitting areas in hotels and in corporate front desks. The table is an appropriate size for collaborating in retail environments.
Microsoft envisions Surface computing as becoming more pervasive than kiosk appliances. The company sees many applications built in government and in private businesses, including homes. When combined with virtualization technologies, Surface might redefine what the office space will look like as well.
The History Of Multitouch
There are huge market indications that multitouch computing is going to reignite interest in display technologies. In 2007, Apple Computer Inc.'s highly successful iPhone launch hinted that consumers were eager to put aside consumer-electronic mini keyboards in favor of multitouch devices. For the first time, users were able to reach out and touch digital content with their hands, all thanks to iPhone's multitouch display. The iPhone redefined the way people interact with digital content, accessed productivity applications, searched the Web and used personal information. The iPhone even made shopping over the Web a little simpler.
But the story on multitouch doesn't begin there. In 2006, Jeff Han, a multitouch display inventor, started a company called Perceptive Pixel as a spinoff of New York University's Courant Institute to develop custom wall-size multitouch interfaces. The work Han and his team did at New York University for the past few years on infrared-based multitouch screens is stunning. The U.S. military is said to be its first customer.
Lenovo, Morrisville, N.C., released the X60 multitouch tablet in 2006. Like the iPhone, this tablet uses capacitive/resistance circuitry to identify touch on a screen. However, capacitive/resistance technology only approximates multitouch capabilities but it is ideal in consumer-electronic devices because the circuitry can fit in small spaces.
In June 2007, Microsoft quietly posted a video on YouTube.com showing how ordinary notebooks can be retrofitted to work with multitouch. The video came from research conducted by the Microsoft team in Cambridge, U.K. The research video might have been a clever maneuver by Microsoft to prevent notebook and tablet vendors and LCD display makers, including rival Apple, from obtaining patents. Already Apple, Cupertino, Calif., has two key patents pending on multitouch—one on fingers and hand gestures and the other one on a multitouch sensor circuit that is being used in its iPhone display—and has begun the process to trademark the term "multitouch" in Asia.
Infrared-based large multitouch screens and the iPhone's capacitive/resistance display were the first technologies used in commercial products in 2006 and 2007. In 2008, consumer-electronic vendors will continue to use either infrared-based panels or capacitive/resistance touch screens. There are no indications of other multitouch technological breakthroughs in 2008. Microsoft's Surface table, by contrast, falls in the infrared technology camp.
Next: The Surface Technology The Surface Technology
Microsoft's technology road map for its Surface table is cemented on four principles: the technology must have multitouch capabilities so that multiple fingers can be recognized simultaneously, must support direct interaction using various circuitry designs so that users can interact with various display technologies, must allow multiple users to interact with a display at the same time and must recognize objects on its surface.
With Surface, Microsoft wants to create a different experience for users to work with their computer. Physically, Surface is similar in size to a coffee table. The side panels are not visible and they cover the hardware guts. As its tabletop, Microsoft placed an acrylic panel with a viewable size of 24 x 18 inches. The panel can display images in 360 degrees.
Surface turns a tabletop into an interactive experience. It comes with multiple USB connectors for downloading files. Users are able to browse through music by simply passing a couple of fingers through a ribbon of albums strung together visually. After selecting a piece, users can simply drag it to a USB-capable MP3 player.
In addition to using Bluetooth and Wi-Fi, Microsoft is developing RFID and similar technologies to recognize and interact with devices on its Surface table. Right now, the company is using a proprietary Domino tag to recognize devices placed on the Surface table. Domino tags work just like barcode tags.
Internally, Surface comes with a DLP projector, just like projectors used in rear-projection TVs. The projector shines upward into the acrylic panel. The panel is composed of a thick sheet of transparent acrylic topped with a thin layer of diffused acrylic that acts as the projection screen.
In addition, a bright infrared light source is aimed upward at the screen along with five cameras used for filtering the IR light source. The light illuminates the fingers or just about anything else that touches the screen. Microsoft uses a variety of techniques to cancel ambient light.
However, DLP projectors use quartz or halogen bulbs, which can have a lifetime of between 500 to 2,000 hours. With some exceptions, most of these projectors provide the raw light for all RPTV and home theater-type front projection systems currently on the market.
Because Microsoft partners are implementing interactive applications for use in public areas, they are going to need extensive maintenance schedules to keep up with the bulbs. These bulbs are not practical for heavy use. By contrast, LED light sources have a lifetime of up to 60,000 hours. However, their current disadvantage is brightness. New LED technologies that are now coming into market such as Goldeneye Inc.'s "recycling light cavity" LEDs may just be the answer to the current limitation.
Goldeneye's technology maximizes the brightness potential of existing LEDs to enable light sources that can drive projection devices to levels high enough for the commercial market. LED-based light sources have many advantages over conventional bulbs besides lifetime, including improved color gamut, contrast, no warm-ups and better power consumption. The technology may be the breakthrough needed to develop large multitouch displays for the custom home and the general consumer market.
Microsoft also provides an SDK written in .Net 3.0 Windows Presentation Foundation. The SDK is a device extension that sits on top of a normal Windows installation, so Microsoft did not have to change the OS kernel. The SDK is only available to Microsoft's chosen Surface partners, which are writing applications.
Beyond Microsoft Surface
Multitouch shifts the old graphical user interface (GUI) into a more natural user interface (NUI). Surface and Han's large displays are an example of NUIs. As the iPhone so elegantly showed the world, capacitive/resistance touch panels also make great NUIs.
Despite the aura and a couple of cool products, for the most part, the multitouch market is sleepy. There are no products with true IR-based multitouch capabilities out on the market. There are signs, however, that vendors are starting to produce new products. In 2007, Dell Inc. announced that it was developing multitouch products. "We do see multitouch as very natural," a Dell spokesman said. "It's going to open a lot of doors for usability and functionality. The technology currently is in development. What's going to be integral to the success of multitouch is the software ecosystem around it, all the way through."