Sony to 'industrialize' their atracTable in June to go head to head with Microsoft's Surface

Tweet

Back in 2008 when Microsoft’s Surface computing system hit the scene, it was cool, no one argued that, but the question over whether it was practical, when taking its size (42-inches wide) and price tag ($12,5oo) into consideration, always lingered. Just imagine, doing most of your computing on a 30-inch multitouch screen embedded in a 42-inch table. Sounds awesome, right? But for $12,500? Not so cool (unless you have the money). Well, Sony seems to have thought Microsoft’s Surface was pretty cool as they have debuted their answer to the massive device: the atracTable.

This atracTable is a 35-inch table computing system just like Surface but will have some key differences. The biggest of these differences might be the fact that the atracTable will surely utilize software developed in house by Sony as opposed to Microsoft Surface’s modified version of Windows Vista. Or perhaps if you look at it hardware wise you’d attributre it to the fact that the atracTable is said, by Sony, to have the ability to determine things like a user’s age and gender and even emotions like anger, happiness. It does this by using 2 Sony ISS XCD-V60 cameras to create a 3D image of a user that can be used to control a cursor, robot or avatar.

You’re probably asking yourself why you would want this and CEO of Atracys (the company that helped Sony develop this table) Gaetan Marti, makes note of this letting us know that it can be used in industrial, retail, gaming or even medical environments. There’s no mention of how much it will cost but seeing how the tech behind this thing seems to rival if not eclipse the Microsoft Surface in terms of price (kind of like the PS3 vs. Xbox 360?) it probably won’t be cheap.

Luckily, Sony has a video demo of the atracTable up on YouTube, effectively confirming that’s it’s not vaporware which you can check out below.