Paint Your Own Touchscreen Computer Interface On Any Surface

How would you like to create your own interactive computer interface on any surface by ‘painting’ it with a hand gesture? That would basically mean the whole world could be an interactive touchscreen in a sense. There has been a lot of innovation lately when it comes to gesture-controlled devices, and this is one looks the most intriguing. It uses a system called WorldKit which allows you to instantly create a computer interface without being connected to any hardware.

It’s definitely an interesting idea, and it’s like something straight out of Star Trek. Researchers at Carnegie Mellon University developed this system which is based on a depth camera and projector. Imagine creating a computer interface for your television remote control on your coffee table or sofa for example. You could do that with a simple hand swipe.

According to these researchers, the projectors are key, and they are what make the entire room interactive. These aren’t just basic computer interfaces either. Imagine being able to make a hand gesture to put a calendar on the wall. Other people in the room could walk up to the calendar and flip the pages.

According to Discovery News, “It works using a ceiling-mounted camera that registers where a person’s hand is. A projector puts the image onto a surface (a couch, for example). When the camera senses gestures from the hand, it will tell the computer to engage certain functions such as “painting” for instance, so a user can draw a keyboard. Another gesture will register as the equivalent of a point and click on a mouse or the tap on a table screen.”

This WorldKit system requires no calibration, and if someone wants to use this system without the projectors, a Kinect can act as a substitute. You can learn more about WorldKit by reading this press release, or you can click on any of the links above. With all the gesture-controlled systems we’ve seen emerge over the past six months, our world is definitely about to become more interactive and techie. Fascinating!