Chris Jablonski posted the following about an LCD screen that recognizes off-screen gestural commands.
Researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology have created a working prototype of a bidirectional LCD (captures and displays images) that allows a viewer to control on-screen objects without the need for any peripheral controllers or even touching the screen. In near Minority Report fashion, interaction is possible with just a wave of the hand.
The BiDI Screen, as it’s called, is based on LCD technology in which arrays of optical sensors are interlaced with a panel’s pixels to detect multiple points of contact with the surface. This enables touch screen interaction. But to get the screen to see the world in front of it, the researchers added a sensor layer of photodiodes behind the liquid crystal layer. The LCD screen works double duty, switching between display mode and capture mode in real time. In display mode, the LCD functions as normal with backlight and liquid crystals modulating to produce an image. When in capture mode the screen serves as a pinhole array to capture the angle and intensity of light passing to the sensor layer and the backlight is disabled. By correlating data from multiple views across the sensor array, the system images objects (such as fingers) that are located beyond the display’s surface and measure their distance from the display. Computer software then enables gestural motion control of the on-screen objects.
Read the entire original article at ZDNet.
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