Interfaces  

Two years after buying Perceptive Pixel, Microsoft is ramping up the mass-production of large-screen multi-touch displays.

Stephen Elop, Microsoft's Executive Vice President of Devices, told attendees of Microsoft's Australian Partner Conference recently that Microsoft was getting ready to "mass produce" large format multi-touch displays.

The announcement comes two years after the acquisition of Jeff Han's Perceptive Pixel Inc. (PPI) by Microsoft.

PPI's large-screen touch displays and interactive whiteboards originally sold in the $80,000 range, but Microsoft has exploring ways to make the displays more affordable.

Microsoft has also been focusing  a lot on large format multi-touch as it builds out the Lync Room System with multiple vendors.

When Microsoft bought PPI, the team was folded into Microsoft's Office division because of the synergies between the Office team and PPI around improving teleconferencing technology.

Last year, the Perceptive Pixel team was moved under the Microsoft Devices team. Under Elop's direction, the group is now focused on making the touch-and pen-enabled interface on these devices more useful and more in-line with the "One Windows" work happening across the company.

The work also build on Microsoft's first Surface devices, which were large format interactive multi-touch tables that have faded out of the public consciousness a bit.

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Microsoft's intention is to enable developers to write applications that shine on these large-screen devices, while not requiring them to deviate from the increasingly unified cross-device development platform Microsoft is building.

Rumors around Microsoft's acquisition of other large format interactive display companies, like SMART Technologies seem to have faded, as the industry continues to struggle to define a niche and killer app for the devices.

Elop didn't reveal any new details about pricing or distribution during his remarks at the Partner Conference, but the fact he mentioned PPI leads many to suspect that news on the devices is imminent. Alex Wilhelm at TechCrunch hints the announcement may be part of the upcoming release of Windows 9.


SOURCE  ZDNet

By 33rd Square

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 Gadgets  

Researchers at the MIT Media Lab and the Max Planck Institutes have created a foldable, cuttable multi-touch sensor that works even when you cut it, allowing multi-touch input in a wide variety of configurations.

Conventional electronic components and devices cannot be cut to customize their size and shape in an ad-hoc manner. Rigid substrates are hard to cut, components are too expensive to be discarded and cutting irreversibly damages the electronic circuits.

Related articles 3D Printed Robotic Anime Doll Takes Shape  Ultra Light, Thin and Flexible Circuits Potentially Offer 'Imperceptible Electronics'  Ten Best Multi-Touch Display Systems

In contrast, people have always cut traditional materials like fabric wood and leather to tailor them to their specific needs. At home, people wrap packages with material, which is cut to shape; they cut protective films to cover books and devices of various sizes; and they create artistic shapes in paper crafts.

Now, a team of researchers has developed printed electronic components and devices can easily be tailored to a custom shape and size by cutting. This is possible because substrates are very thin and flexible, and printouts are cheap.

So far other printed devices have adopted mainly the circuit designs from conventional electronics.  The researchers from the Max Planck Institute for Informatics and the MIT Media Lab have created new patterns for the printed circuits that allow the electronics to work even after they are cut.

The team of Simon Olberding, Nan-Wei Gong, John Tiab, Joseph A. Paradiso and Jürgen Steimle write in their paper:

Our vision is that printed sensors will be so inexpensive that multi-touch sensing capability will become an inherent part of the material. For instance, manufacturers of protective foils will offer a product line that features multi-touch sensing. Paper manufacturers will offer paper, cardboard or adhesive labels, which have the printed multi-touch sensor embedded. Manufacturers of wooden boards will offer boards that feature the sensor. The user buys the material in one of several standard sizes and then cuts it to the desired size and shape, using tools such as scissors, razors, saws, or laser cutters. This very direct physical manipulation seamlessly integrates with existing practices for customization, prototyping and crafting.

They made their proof-of-concept prototypes with conductive inkjet printing. In contrast to larger-scale roll-toroll processing, this allowed the researchers to easily experiment with different designs without a complex setup. They used silver ink to print conductive traces and electrodes on photo paper using an off-the-shelf inkjet printer.

The circuit layouts used in the printed sheets were inspired by topology and coding theory. To test their concepts, the researchers created multi-touch sensing devices with their methods.  Makers are sure to adopt this new method before it hits the mainstream.

Future work will address other printed components and devices, including active ones, and show how these can be made robust for desired shape adaptations and against undesired damages.

SOURCE  Embodied Interaction

By 33rd Square

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