Purdue researchers turn any surface into interactive touch screen

PURDUE UNIVERSITY, Ind. (WLFI) - Imagine every surface you touch becoming an interactive touch screen.

Mechanical Engineering Professor Karthik Ramani and other Purdue students and faculty have created a new program that can detect touch and hand gestures on any surface.

"On any surface you can create projections on, you can convert it into a multi-touch surface, so you don't need an LCD screen and you don't need an instrument to surface. All you need is a depth-sensing camera which is very cheap, and then a projection system," Ramani said.

The program is called Extended Multitouch. Computer and Electrical Engineering Assistant Professor Niklas Elmqvist says it uses a Microsoft Kinect depth-sensing camera to detect touch.

"The Kinect is really an amazing technology. It's a relatively cheap consumer level depth camera and instead of seeing color, which is what a normal digital camera does, it sees depth," Elmqvist said.

With the help of a projector any surface becomes essentially a giant iPad.

"Shoot it at any surface and all of a sudden, (you'll) turn that surface into something you can interact on, as well as above," Elmqvist said.

Ramani said Extended Multitouch has been in the works for nearly a decade. He says the program can be used by multiple people and although it's a new development, it can be a useful tool in any home.

"Playing games on the table," Ramani said. "You can start turning appliances on and off from your table. You can pretty much interact with any physical instrument with touch on surfaces."

Elmqvist says the Extended Multitouch isn't just limited to the home. He says it could be a useful tool in any classroom, enhancing any white board.

"If you can turn them into fully interactive surfaces (such as) when I'm teaching a class, I can bring up a webpage. I can bring up some interactive pictures or a movie right on top of the whiteboard," Elmqvist said.

Elmqvist and Ramani both said the new program brings what we see in movies to our everyday lives.

"It's the movies coming real here, and things like Ironman, and several other movies which we have seen. These kind of things are real now, and we are part of that extension into the future," Ramani said.

The future Ramani says he's excited to be a part of.