OmniTouch turns any surface into a touchscreen phone

The idea of having an invisible phone has always been the fantasy of people everywhere, but it’s not exactly the most practical of “gadgets”. We’ve had stuff like the Kinect-iPhone and now, some researchers over at the Carnegie Mellon Human Computer Interaction Institute and Microsoft have come up with something called the OmniTouch.

Consisting of a pico projector and a motion detector that’s mounted on your shoulder, the OmniTouch projects a user interface onto any surface you point it at. Be it your hand, the wall or a table; as long as you have a surface to work with, the OmniTouch can turn it into a smartphone. At the moment it seems much too cumbersome and unwieldy to be practical. Not to mention the lack of privacy you get if you use this thing in public. Outdoor use is also going to be a problem, and let’s not get started on the battery life of such a product.

But, even with all that said – it’s still one of the most interesting ideas we’ve come across. It’s probably going to be awhile more before this becomes a commercial product, but you can check out a couple of demonstration videos to see it in action:

George Wong
Categories: Cellphones
Tags: Microsoft, phone, projector