Did you know the first “brain-tweet” was sent out this year?
How about that we may someday be customizing windshields with widgets? In the
not-to-distant future, we may be interfacing with computers in exciting and
innovative new ways.
In the grand scheme of history, it wasn’t long ago that the first telephone
conversation took place. Relatively speaking, that makes the personal computer
an invention of yesteryear, and social networking only a blink of an eye later.
Just imagine what’s coming in the near future…
The future of how we interact with computers is exciting to say the least.
What once seemed like nonsense outside of Hollywood and Science Fiction is now
starting to find it’s way into reality, and some of the technology is a bit
overwhelming. Have a taste of what the future of interface design has to
offer:
Heads
Up
Displays
F/A-18C HUD by RealD
Although Heads Up Displays (or HUD’s) were originally developed for
military aviation so that pilots could keep their heads up, HUD’s have
found their place in many more applications. Today they can be found in many
cars and in a wide variety of experimental scenarios.
Consumer Vehicles
Some of today’s cars are already offering HUD’s that display information such
as speed or RPM’s directly onto the windshield. There are even helmet mounted
Heads Up Displays available for motorcyclists now. So far we’ve only dabbled in
the field of vehicular HUD’s though.
A patent
from Microsoft reveals that the company may look into creating
windshield HUD’s in cars that display all sorts of information from temperature
to email. Maybe someday we’ll even have windshields with enhanced night vision,
or even customizable widgets.
Eyewear
There are many new eyewear HUD products on the horizon including a pair of
specs being developed by Brother, and eye-gesture
glasses developed by German researchers at the Fraunhofer Institute for
Photonic Microsystems.
Applications for these devices include navigating with augmented reality
software, assisting engineers and doctors, or even something as simple as
watching a movie or browsing the internet… only you get to do it hands free.
It appears that many of the newer eyewear HUD products may start emerging as
soon as 2010, but the exact specifications and pricing is a bit blurry. Until
then, if you’re a DIY kind of person you might be able to hack
a wearable computer with a heads-up display of your own
like this guy.
Gesture-based Interfaces
Gestural Interfaces allow computers to recognize natural
human idiosyncrasies and actions. For example, there are quite a few
gesture-based systems that decipher emotions in human faces or the “hidden”
language of hand motions.
Often times, gestures act as a more seamless way to communicate with
machines. For example, the iPhone
bump application allows two users to exchange contact information by
literally “bumping” their phones into each other. Such an action could
be compared to bumping into someone, or swapping business cards, and feels more
natural to the end user.
Likewise, the Palm Pre has a “gesture pad” that recognizes
basic thumb swipe patterns: swipe from right-to-left to go back, throw an
application off the screen to exit, or slowly drag up to bring up a global
navigation menu.
You may already be aware that there are tablets that can learn your unique
handwriting patterns and transcribe written text with a pen into plain text for
use computer documents. What may blow your mind though is that a group of
scientists have a working model of a new system that does this without the
pen. That’s right, you scribble your thoughts into thin air, and a
computer transcribes it into editable text.
Whatever the application, gesture interfaces that recognize human body
language instead of archaic data entry are here to stay. They’re intuitive, user
friendly, and it may even be appropriate to call them “fun“. Have
you seen the latest iPod’s? Just shake them to shuffle your music
library!
There have been a couple of very promising developments coming from the
Entertainment industry for spatial Motion Interfaces: interfaces that translate
movement captured in a three-dimensional space into inputs on a device. Almost
everyone knows about the Nintendo Wii’s motion
controllers. Sony and Microsoft are also hopping on board, introducing their
own technologies in the coming years.
Microsoft Xbox’s Project Natal turns the user into the
controller.
The PlayStation
Motion Controller is Sony PlayStation’s response to market demand
for a motion controller, one-upping the Wii’s Motion controller by tracking
distance on top of motion and rotation. Perhaps even more exciting in the field
of spatial Motion Interfaces is Microsoft Xbox’s Project Natal
which uses no controller whatsoever, instead tracking the human body as the
means for controls.
Outside of the gaming industry, Toshiba has been developing their own
hardware that appears to be taken straight out of Minority Report.
They hope that someday their technology will become more available in the
mainstream markets.
Augmented
Reality
Wikitude AR Travel Guide
GPS systems, though useful, have begun to lose their luster as they
find their way into more devices. What if instead of showing an overhead map of
the area with an overlaying route, your GPS revealed directions directly
on a live video feed of your current location?
That would be cool, huh?
Such is one of many potential applications of augmented
reality systems: live views of real-world environments combined
with computer generated imagery. It’s not just your imagination. In fact,
some devices including a hefty number of smart phones are already finding
themselves victims to AR software (Maybe you’ve heard of the Wikitude Travel Guide)
Augmented reality isn’t limited to navigation of course. There are already
applications like Yelp for the
iPhone that streams user reviews of restaurants over the camera feed; or
Nokia’s Point and Find that allows
users to find relevant information about objects simply by pointing your phone
camera at it; and many other practical ideas that may become a reality in the
near future.
Other
Sensory-Based Interfaces
Neural Based Interfaces
Telepathy may be the works of science fiction, but with the use of new
neural computer interfaces, there may be a time in the future
where sending thoughts becomes common practice. It was actually earlier this
year that the first tweet was
sent via brain from the University
of Wisconsin’s Neural Interface Lab.
Another company, Braingate, has developed a
similar technology that has allowed paralyzed participants to check email, or
even play a game of pong using only their mind.
The technology works by implanting a small microchip in the users brain which
analyzes pulses as inputs for the devices being used. Of course, the technology
is still in it’s infant stages allowing the average user to write at
approximately 10 characters per minute, but the applications for such a
technology are limitless. Disabled users who previously have had little or no
access to email or the internet can use this technology to communicate like
never before.
It is hoped that someday this technology will go beyond the trivial game of
pong and even help those who are paralyzed by creating a connection between the
brain and muscles where a spinal cord injury otherwise prohibits communication.
Such a connection may allow paralyzed users to someday move certain muscles
again, and perhaps even walk.
Voice Based Interfaces
Left: iPhone | Right:Tom
Clancy’s EndWar
Vocal Interfaces aren’t exactly new, but we keep finding new applications for
them. From cell phones that recognize basic commands and names, to video games
that respond to speech (such as the game “Tom Clancy’s: EndWar” which can be
controlled entirely by voice commands), we’ve seen some innovative
applications thus far.
MIT
recently developed a wheelchair with a voice interface that not only
responds to speech, but also saves detailed maps in memory and can take the user
to their desired location via simple voice command. Another relatively new
application of voice interfaces includes Google
Mobiles “Search by Voice” commands.
Surfaces
Become
Smart
Last but not least, interface designers are tapping into something almost as
ubiquitous as air itself: surfaces.
If you want to see a truly inspiring look of what the future may be more
like, you’ve gotta take a minute to watch Microsoft’s vision of the future. If
it doesn’t make you want to live in the future, nothing will.
Okay, so maybe were a ways off from this, but there are a definitely few
conceptual ideas worth getting excited over. For one, CRISTAL
is a smart surface that takes on the form of a common table. What’s not so
common however is that this table can control many of the electronic devices in
your room, such as TV’s, Sound Systems, Lights, Radios, and even DVD
Players.
There’s also a group of MIT students who have developed a prototype
system that could potentially turn any surface into a smart
surface using a webcam and projector. Pick up a newspaper, and watch a
video of the headline news directly on the paper. Need to dial a
friend? Hold out your hand to let a number pad appear before your eyes.
It’s a concept of course, but definitely one I could get behind.
, by Dan Saffer.
