In a brief story named "Anywhere Interface," Technology Review writes that a small French company, Sensitive Object, has found a way to turn any rigid surface into an interface for all kinds of electronic devices. The technology involves only very cheap sensors and a process named "time reversal acoustics." When you tap on a surface equipped with the technology, you can use up to 544 'virtual' keys to start your heating system, type your e-mails or stop the DVD player. In retail stores, you could 'click' on a mannequin to find the price of the clothes. The Register ("Keyboards are old -- tap tables to send email") and the New York Times ("Knock 3 Times on the Ceiling (to Turn on the DVD Player)") also published stories about this interesting technology. Read more.
Let's start with Technology Review (it's so short that I reproduce it in its entirety).
French physicists Ros Kiri Ing and Mathias Fink have figured out how to turn any rigid surface into an interface for electronic systems. The technology -- which the pair hope to commercialize via their Paris-based startup, Sensitive Object -- uses one or two inexpensive accelerometers to detect finger taps on, say, a storefront display window or a keyboard drawn on a blackboard.
A computer chip calculates the precise origin of each tap and translates that information into mouse clicks and keystrokes. Users might use the technology, for example, to 'click' on a storefront mannequin’s hat to learn its price. Ing says the technique has advantages over other user interfaces under development because it can work with a surface as large as four square meters, and the number of 'keys' can reach 544.
Here, a traditional school blackboard, equipped with cheap sensors, is turned into an input device for the computer (Credit: Sensitive Object).
As it is often the case, The Register used a somewhat irreverent tone. Here are the two opening paragraphs.
A startup whose technology will allow you to turn virtually anything into an input device, so for example you could use a table to change channel or pick up the phone, or control your computer by banging your head on the wall, has received €2 million in financing from European VC outfit Sofinnova. French company Sensitive Object's Reversys uses cheap sensors and a process it calls "time reversal acoustics" so that you can make the objects around you can come alive simply by tapping them.
Maybe we exaggerated when we said "virtually anything", because as far as we can gather the object has to be sufficiently rigid for a tap in a specific area to have a specific effect. So hamburgers, soft fruit, most items of apparel probably won't work. But still. According to Sensitive Object, low cost sensors can be fitted to rigid surfaces, and send input to the audio input of a computer. Time reversal acoustics analyses the sound and figures out where on the object they came from, so you could be turning a table or a window into a touchpad. Or a keyboard. Or something.
In its story, which apparently doesn't need registration, the New York Times offered many more details.
The real accomplishment of modern science and technology consists in taking ordinary men, informing them narrowly and deeply and then, through appropriate organization, arranging to have their knowledge combined with that of other specialized but equally ordinary men. This dispenses with the need for genius. The resulting performance, though less inspiring, is far more predictable.
—John Kenneth Galbraith (b. 1908)
The technology uses small inexpensive sensors attached to the table or window to pick up the vibrations, which are sent to the audio input of the computer for analysis to reveal the exact location of each tap.
"It's like touching an A. T. M. screen," said Alexander Sutin, a scientist at Stevens Institute of Technology in Hoboken, N. J., who does research in acoustics. "But it can be done at an ordinary desk or window."
And here is how the system works and why it's inexpensive.
The new system requires only one or two sensors, devices called accelerometers that detect the vibrations. The accelerometers cost bout $2 or $3 each, Dr. Ing said.
The technology takes advantage of the precision with which sound waves can be distinguished by computer software. "When you generate a sound from one location, the sound is unique," Dr. "If you generate another sound at another location, you can distinguish the two sounds."
The New York Times also gives more details about the time-reversal acoustics process.
The system is based on a process known as time-reversal acoustics, in which computer programs use the information stored within sound waves to calculate their source.
In time-reversal acoustics, once sound waves are analyzed and their source determined, other sound waves can be generated to converge on the source. That's one way kidney stones are treated: an ultrasound beam that scatters from a kidney stone is recorded, analyzed and time-reversed, and then more ultrasound waves are emitted to destroy the stone.
In Dr. Ing's application, though, no new wave is physically generated. Instead the computer does all of the work, calculating the reverse path of the sound wave to reveal its place of origin.
Commercial jazz, soap opera, pulp fiction, comic strips, the movies set the images, mannerisms, standards, and aims of the urban masses. In one way or another, everyone is equal before these cultural machines; like technology itself, the mass media are nearly universal in their incidence and appeal. They are a kind of common denominator, a kind of scheme for pre-scheduled, mass emotions.
—C. Wright Mills (1916–62)
"This is a very clever application of time-reversal acoustics," said William Kuperman, a professor at the University of California at San Diego and president of the Acoustical Society of America.
I don't know if this technology has a bright future, but it looks better than having a bunch of remote control boxes.
And imagine typing your e-mails on an area of four square meters: this would mean lots of exercise.
Sources: Prototype, Technology Review, December 2004; John Lettice, The Register, September 7, 2004; Anne Eisenberg, New York Times, July 1, 2004; Sensitive Object website
Related stories can be found in the following categories.
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Human Computer Interface
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