OmniTouch System Turns Any Flat Surface Into A Touch Screen

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I think we’ve all inherently drooled over those big touch screen systems…those Microsoft Surface tables, the Padzilla case that turned your iPad into a coffee table, and so on that let us turn Angry Birds into a life-sized experience. Or maybe we’ve just fantasized about playing Starcraft II by pointing at a wall display in the grandest Patton tradition. The folks out at Carnegie Mellon University, backed up by Microsoft, may have found the way to do just that.

It’s called the OmniTouch system, and essentially, it turns most any flat surface into a touch screen. It combines a bit of Microsoft’s Kinect (or rather, a device similar in nature to the Kinect) and a pico projector into a single unit that you wear on your shoulder. The projector then fires off an image which you can interact with by touching it, just like the Kinect might offer on your Xbox 360. Early development tests suggest that most any flat surface works here, from walls to laptop screens even going as far as clothing and your own palm. And the results seem encouraging, too, with most keystrokes recognized.

There are a variety of applications here, not the least of which is in smartphone technology. Such a design would allow you to project a numerical keypad onto any flat surface to dial out, or give you access to most any touch screen driven application from whatever flat surface you happen to be facing at the time. Basically, with a system like this in hand, it’s not hard to imagine from there a cell phone–or even tablet–that perches on your shoulder and allows you to make all your necessary inputs from a set of controls projected directly in front of you.

Naturally, this is still in the development stages, but with Carnegie Mellon and Microsoft behind it, they might have this out to us sooner than you might expect.

But what do you think about it? Is this the kind of interface that might give Windows Phone platforms a real edge against the Apple lineup? Or is this just another gimmick that will go nowhere and matter little in the grand scheme? Either way, we want to hear from you, so head on down to the comments section below and tell us what you think!