Haptic interfaces
For the past 20 years, our interactions with computers has been defined largely by the paradigm created at Xerox PARC and popularized by Apple with the Macintosh, then commoditized by Microsoft: the mouse and keyboard. While there have been fits and starts, alternative inputs, whether they be voice recognition or handwriting recognition have been unsuccessful at grasping the conceptual baton away from the point-and-click interface.
When I worked for Apple, back in the early 90s, I witnessed the first attempt to provide a new interface to systems: the Newton. While it depended on handwriting recognition for data input, it had a direct manipulation non-modal interface that was unlike anything that people had used before. Unfortunately, ham-strung by inadequate hardware, and the inability to use the Rosetta1 recognition-engine, the Newton quickly died off and we returned to a singular interface model.
Now, it seems, people are beginning to experiment more with other interface models, including haptic interfaces, made famous in the movie Minority Report. The people at NYU are working on an interface that allows you to not only use multiple fingers, but multiple hands (even multiple people) to directly manipulate the world inside the computer. There is a brilliant video available. In addition, it seems Apple has applied for various patents on a haptic interface that appears to be the “next generation iPod,” although Apple is notorious for leading others astray with slightly misleading illustrations.
The next step past basic haptic interfaces is to integrate the concepts of tactile interface response, where the system actually provides some indication of the interaction, whether it be a slight “bump” on the edge of a shape, or the push-back against the user’s fingers. There have been some initial attempts at such an interface, and some of the work Applied Minds is doing falls into this area, but the future is wide-open, and right now we are limited not just by software, but also by the ability of the hardware to provide this kind of feedback.
Future users of electronics will wonder how we survived with antiquated interfaces and indirect manipulation (i.e., a mouse), and laugh at our naive views of metaphor. Hopefully that future will be much sooner than we expect, and work like that done at NYU, and hopefully commercialized in the near-term, will change how people view the possibility of interaction.
1 Rosetta is both the name of the internally-developed neural-net-driven adaptive handwriting engine for the Newton as well as the dynamic translation engine used on the new Intel-based Macs. While I understand the re-use of the codename, and its applicability to both projects, I abhor the burying of the more advanced of the two ideas under what appears to be licensed technology.
This entry was posted at 5:36 pm on 13 February 2006 and is filed under Technology. You can follow any responses to this entry through the post-specific RSS 2.0 feed.
Terminology nitpick: I’m Not really sure that “haptic” is the word you’re looking for. Usually that term refers to interfaces that integrate force feedback or realtime, interactive tactile feedback into the experience, not just a touch-screen as is happening here. The technology in this posting is certainly interesting , but not haptic. I’d file it under bi-manual, mulitpoint touch screen. Still good stuff.
Well, the idea was that this is one step towards haptic interfaces, and the work that Tactiva has done is definitely haptic in nature. I don’t think that it’s possible to move to feedback UIs without first moving to multi-hand/multipoint interfaces.
Not sure that I agree with that – there are lots of haptic/force feedback interfaces that have nothing to do with touch screens – the Phantom for example is a single-point stylus device, not a visual display, but a pointing input. It’s driven by high-speed motors to provide interactive force feedback information. This stuff is used today for (among other things) building surgery simulators for medical training.
I understand what you’re saying, but there really is a difference between touch screen technology and haptic technology. One isn’t a precondition for the other.
I would agree that they are not pre-conditions for one-another, however, I believe for “general user interfaces” they are well suited for one-another. The Tactiva interface provides tactile indications of buttons and edges. This sort of thing has been discussed for a while, but I think that the integration of them into a single UI, with touch-screens, is relatively new.
As you say, haptic interfaces—specifically those with force-feedback—have been around for a long time in specialized fields, such as simulation, but their integration into a mainstream user interface application is relatively new. There was, however, many years ago, an article (or demo? it has been a long time), about integrating touch-screen and haptic interfaces for a virtual desk application. Things like sliding paper off specific places on the desk to create a paper copy, and others to “throw it in the trash.” I wish I could remember where I read/saw it.
Ah, Apple… ahead of its time as usual.
hello from Italy I’m working in an haptic interfaces lab.
have you ever seen this:
Haptic Desktop
probably you were refering to something different
anyway I’m happy that someone has interests on such a kind of things.
ops sorry the link didn’t appear, hear it is:
http://www.percro.org/index.php?pageId=HapticDesktop
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