Mimo Magic Touch(Special Gadgets)

Mimo Magic Touch

MimoMonitors.com has announced a new addition to its secondary monitors lineup. Billed as the world's first USB-powered capacitive touchscreen display, the Mimo Magic Touch features a 10.1-inch screen running at 1024 x 600 resolution. It can be used either with its dock/base, or simply held in the hand as a sort of tethered tablet.

While the brand is not particularly well-known, it's managed to create some buzz around its offerings that provide computer users with some extra workspace. These include the 7-inch USB-powered iMo Pivot Touchscreen Monitor, and the Mimo Mini 710 USB Monitor.

The Magic Touch can be used as a touch-operated extension of a home PC. The company also states it's suitable to be utilized in business, industrial and healthcare applications. The device requires no additional power source given it's connected via USB, but alas, it operates on the 2.0 standard, which is roughly ten times slower than USB 3.0. It comes with a brightness of 200cd/m2, contrast ratio of 300:1 and 16ms responsiveness. There's also the Deluxe version, which additionally features a USB hub with a couple of ports and an AC adapter, as external USB devices require some extra power.

One major constraint of the product, however, is that the touch-operated interface works with Windows 7 only. Mac OS and Win XP/Vista/2000 are supported, but without touch capabilities, which makes the upcoming Mimo arrival an ordinary and rather pricey secondary display on these systems.
The Mimo Magic Touch retails at US$299.99, or US$329.99 for the USB hub-equipped Deluxe version. Both units are now available for pre-order, with a shipping date "before Christmas."

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OmniTouch turns any surface into a touchscreen interface

 Shoulder-mounted OmniTouch prototype

In its current proof-of-concept iteration, which was prototyped at idea-rich Microsoft Research in Redmond, Washington, by PhD student Chris Harrison and his team, the rough-hewn shoulder mounted device resembles a sci-fi prosthetic weapon, but looks can be deceiving.
"We explored and prototyped a powerful alternative approach to mobile interaction that uses a body-worn projection/sensing system to capitalize on the tremendous surface area the real world provides," explains Harrison.

  The OmniTouch wearable interface projector

Like the proverbial "better" mousetrap, the concept of mobile interaction seems prone to constant tinkering. The OmniTouch draws from a blend of disciplines to overcome numerous issues that beset similar devices. Some approaches require placing markers on the fingertips but still can't discern whether the fingers are "clicked" (touching the surface) or hovering. Others can't "read" surfaces beyond those of the user's own body or they lack the ability to respond to touch/drag motions.
To surmount these hurdles, Harrison and his colleagues combined a PrimeSense short-range depth camera with a Microvision ShowWX+ laser pico-projector. The camera generated a 320x240 depth map at a rate of 30FPS, even for objects as close as 8 inches (20cm). The projector delivered a sharp, focus-free, wide-angle image independent of the surface's distance - a useful property in such applications. Both devices were then linked to a desktop computer.

 OmniTouch displays interface on user's hand

The OmniTouch gets its edge in finger position detection through a complex series of calculations that begins with the generation of the depth map. The second video below contains a detailed description of the process which enables the device to determine whether one's fingers are floating above a surface of actually contacting it. The inputs yielded closely approximate those of touchscreens and mice, so the possibilities for the OmniTouch are seemingly endless. Let's hope the wait for a commercial version isn't.
The paper, OmniTouch: Wearable Multitouch Interaction Everywhere, by Chris Harrison, Hrvoje Benko and Andy Wilson was presented in the Proceedings of the 24th Annual ACM Symposium on User Interface Software and Technology (Santa Barbara, California, October 16 - 19, 2011)

(Source: Chris Harrison)

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