08 January 2007

Beyond Multi-Touch
Nokia Patents 3D Touchless Control Interface

You think that MULTI-touch is cool and innovative!? How about NO-touch interface, touchless device that goes beyond multi-touch by tracking the hand motions in three dimensional space?

How about the multi-touch like mobile handset UI, that does not actually require touch, can track your hand movements in three dimensional space and even recognize 3D hand gestures?

Well it is not a secret that Nokia is working on the 5th generation of the S60 platform that should be out soon and features the touch UI.

We have already wrote that Finnish giant has decide to go step further and develop technology that will offer a much more than the vibrations and click sounds.

The upcoming S60 touch interface from Nokia promises a real button-like response enabled with the two small piezo sensor pads under the screen that provides a "0.1mm movement in the screen itself with exactly the same sort of fingertip feedback as with a conventional keyboard.

That's the quite cool and very promising technology but till today we didn't know that they are also working on even cooler technology, completely new and innovative touchless interface?

To go beyond touch and create touchless 3D device control interface, Nokia decided to use Ultrasonic Transducers (USTs), arrayed around the perimeter of the display.

Ultrasonic transducers emit ultrasonic sound waves that propagate through air. When finger gets into the path of these waves, the signal is reflected back and detected by the transducer.

Three or more transducers (14 A-B-C in picture above) arrayed around a perimeter of the mobile device create a 10-20 cm working volume of space above the display, where user finger ( 20A and B) locations and their movements in real time can be detected using triangulation techniques. These movements can then be interpreted as various three dimensional gestures.

To ease the operation of the device, visual finger pointers (12A, B) are displayed on the screen of mobile device.

3D gestures are translated into various object oriented, or gesture/browsing oriented commands. The patent application gives several examples.

.:[ Read the full undoubtedly great Unwiredview's article right here ]:.