Glimpses of the future care of movies and books tell us of user interfaces so advanced that it need be limited to cumbersome hardware. Well that sci-fi future may not be so fictional after all as the Kinect brings the possibility of having a multitouch control panel to any blank surface. With the Kinect’s depth detection feature, members of the Kinect community have managed to create this TUIO Multitouch Pad and “conjure” it to any blank space. This development brings another use of the Kinect in order to make the dream of a fully-functional, cloud computing society alive.
In this video by Youtube user, RobbeOfficial, the user is able to input commands and the Kinect was able to detect the finger presses primarily because of the method used by the developer in inputting commands. As the detected object (finger) becomes closer to the background, the Kinect registers this as an input command. Therefore, any blank surface can be made into a touchpad or even a control panel as this proof of concept experience further developments.
For more information about the Kinect TUIO Multitouch Pad, visit the project’s Youtube page or download the code here.
