DeviceGuru

Microsoft showcased “pseudo translucent” display technology last week at its annual TechFest conference. LucidTouch creates the illusion of a semi-transparent device by allowing users to interact with the display from the rear of the device.

In contrast to normal touchscreens — which require finger-presses on the front of the screen, during which the finger obscures the portion of the screen being touched — LucidTouch offers higher positioning accuracy by superimposing visual feedback of the position of the user’s hand directly onto the displayed content.

“By overlaying an image of the user’s hands onto the screen, we create an illusion of the mobile device itself being semitransparent,” wrote Microsoft computer scientist Patrick Baudisch on the LucidTouch web page. This “pseudo translucency” results from using an imaging device to sense the position of the hand behind the device, and rendering a translucent version onto the screen, as shown below. (In last week’s LucidTouch prototype demonstration, the imaging device was a small camera mounted behind the device — see video below.)

Baudisch adds that LucidTouch also enables “multitouch input,” allowing touch input simultaneously with all 10 fingers. “We will present initial study results that indicate that many users found touching on the back preferable to touching on the front, because of reduced occlusion, higher precision, and an ability to make multifinger input,” he wrote.

Two LucidTouch demonstrations: pointing at a menu item from behind the device; drawing two lines at once using two fingers
(Click each image to enlarge)

The following YouTube video demonstrates LucidTouch technology and explains how it works:

TechFest is an annual Microsoft-sponsored event that brings researchers from Microsoft’s research labs around the world to Redmond to share their latest work with the company’s product teams, in hopes of accelerating the transfer of next-generation “advanced technologies” into Microsoft products.

LucidTouch has been jointly developed by researchers at Microsoft and Mitsubishi Electric. For further details, visit the LucidTouch page on Microsoft Research’s website.

[Images and video source: Microsoft]