Andy Wilson, a researcher from Microsoft Research's Redmond, Wash., campus, demonstrates LaserTouch. An infrared camera tracks how he touches the screen to prompt a response from the software.
(Credit: Stefanie Olsen/CNET News.com)MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif.--Microsoft researchers on Thursday demonstrated a new, low-cost method for manipulating a digital desktop or wall display with two hands.
Called LaserTouch, the prototype is the latest invention of computer vision specialist Andy Wilson, a researcher from Microsoft Research's Redmond, Wash., campus. Wilson has worked on Microsoft's Surface computing, among other projects. But more recently he's developed a sensing technology system that would allow people to retrofit any display--e.g., a desktop or projector--so that they could use their hands, instead of a mouse, to interact with the computer.
The system uses a low-cost infrared camera and lasers to track how the user touches the screen in order to prompt a response from the software. The result could be a virtual chess game with a friend over a networked computer, or a better way to show off a PowerPoint presentation, Wilson said.
"It's a simple technique," Wilson said Thursday during a presentation of the prototype. Wilson was referring to the low-cost camera and laser setup, but he said the magic is really in the software he's developed.
On Thursday, Microsoft hosted its fourth research road show here at its Silicon Valley campus since the local arm opened in 2001. The event, which was open to press, academia, high-school students, and industry, was designed to demonstrate the company's research efforts and new technologies emerging from the labs. (The company has labs in Redmond, Mountain View, and, this summer, in Cambridge, Mass.)
LaserTouch is the newest prototype from Microsoft Research, but researchers also presented other previously unveiled projects from the labs. Those included Microsoft WorldWide Telescope, a virtual telescope for scientists and the public to peer into the heavens.
Researchers also previewed Boku, a programming language for kids on the Xbox 360 game controller. The technology lets kids guide, or "program," the behavior of a virtual robot through the use of visual cue cards in the game, rather than HTML (Hypertext Markup Language).
Even though LaserTouch was billed as an "inexpensive" multi-touch sensor technology, Wilson didn't say how much such a system would cost. He said that there aren't any plans to turn LaserTouch into a product as of now, partly because there are still problems with the technology. For example, it doesn't support multiple users that well. If two people were attempting to manipulate the display, for example, one person's hands might block the laser from "seeing" the other person's hands.
If turned into a product, however, it might save someone as much as $10,000 if they were in the market for a Microsoft Surface computer.
Still, the company is working on bringing down the cost of computer vision-sensing technologies to improve products like games, according to Wilson.
REDMOND, Wash.--When Microsoft releases its WorldWide Telescope this spring, the program will be a Windows-only download.
Much of the astronomical community, however, uses Macs and other Unix-based hardware. So, when principal developer Jonathan Fay shows off the program, he often uses a MacBook Pro. The telescope program itself, though, is running in Windows using the Mac's dual-boot Boot Camp software.
Microsoft's WorldWide Telescope software offers several different ways to look at the heavens, including the Hydrogen Alpha view.
(Credit: Ina Fried/CNET News.com)Other Mac users will have to use similar technology. The program can theoretically run using virtualization programs, such as VMware's Fusion or Parallels, but 3D applications often throw those programs for a loop.
Principal researcher Curtis Wong used a WinTel laptop running Vista on Monday night to demonstrate the program to journalists at a reception kicking off TechFest, Microsoft's internal science fair. Microsoft first demoed an early version of the software at last year's TechFest, while its current incarnation was shown last week at the TED conference in Monterey, Calif.
Given his penchant for Cupertino-designed hardware, I wondered why Fay was less than enthusiastic about prospects for a native Mac version. He said the type of programming needed to make the software a reality can be done vastly faster using Microsoft's .Net and C# programming tools.
To make it truly cross-platform, he said, "I'd basically be looking at three to four years of development." Plus, he quipped, "It doesn't hurt if a few people buy Windows."
Although Wong and Fay have done the actual software development largely over the last 18 months, the genesis of the project goes back to conversations Wong had years ago with now-missing Microsoft researcher Jim Gray, to whom Wong paid tribute.
"It's dedicated to Jim," he said, noting that Microsoft is making the software available free via a not-for-profit Web site.
Wong demonstrated a number of different ways to view the universe, including X-ray, hydrogen alpha and traditional imaging. The different views offer starkly different looks at the universe.
The images, as previously noted, are stitched together from a variety of sources including the Hubble and other Earth and space-based telescopes. Think of it as a "terapixel panorama," Fay and Wong said of the finished product.
Contrary to some reports, however, the program does not use Microsoft's PhotoSynth technology, but rather a different stitching technology and an internally developed projection method known as Toast.
A view of space from Microsoft's Worldwide Telescope
(Credit: Microsoft)
Microsoft on Wednesday gave TED conference-goers--an audience typically filled with stars like Goldie Hawn or Forest Whitaker--a close-up of real celestial bodies with its new virtual telescope.
Microsoft demonstrated long-awaited software called WorldWide Telescope to an audience at the exclusive Technology Entertainment and Design conference in Monterey, Calif., a four-day confab that started Wednesday. It's unclear whether the demo of the astronomy technology made anyone in the audience cry like former Microsoft evangelist Robert Scoble, but the images (shown above) were certainly stellar.
WorldWide Telescope, similar to the sky feature in Google Earth but much more expansive, is a virtual map of space that features tens of millions of digital images from sources like the Hubble telescope and the Sloan Digital Sky Survey, a project championed by missing Microsoft researcher Jim Gray (to whom Microsoft dedicated the WorldWide Telescope on Wednesday). From the desktop, the technology lets people pan and zoom across the night sky, zeroing in on the Big Dipper, Mars, or the first galaxies to emerge after the Big Bang. It also lets people call up related data, stories, or context about what they're seeing from sources online.
Harvard University astrophysicist Roy Gould, who demonstrated the telescope with Microsoft principal researcher Curtis Wong, said that that the technology holds promise for research and for humanity.
"The WorldWide Telescope takes the best images from the greatest telescopes on Earth...and in space...and assembles them into a seamless, holistic view of the universe," Gould, of the Harvard Center for Astrophysics, said at the conference.
"This new resource will change the way we do astronomy...the way we teach astronomy....and, most importantly, I think it's going to change the way we see ourselves in the universe."
Microsoft also unveiled a promotional site for the telescope project Wednesday, but the free technology won't be live until sometime this spring. Without the tears, several academics talk up the telescope in video on the site. Here is a sampling of the awe-struck sentiment: "It's the universe that you yourself can voyage through." "It's a magic carpet." "It's an example of where science and science education is going." "My hope is to have it on every kid's desktop."
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