this is the future of computing! - promethean interactive whiteboard

Iverson Han, an engineer with a pale face, glasses and black Manhattan costume, faced California on the first day of TED 2006, the annual conference on technology, entertainment and design, held in Monterrey. The 30-year-
Old is just curious about confab, as its ad copy says, "the world's leading thinkers and industrialists come together to find inspiration.
"On that day, thinkers and industrialists including Google billionaire Sergey Brin and Larry Page
Jeff Bezos and Bill Joy from Amazon helped write Sun Microsystems code from scratch.
Technology giant.
It's enough to make anyone feel a little small.
Then Han began his speech.
His fingertips shimmer and he puts them in the dark blue 36-inch-
The wide display screen in front of him and the playful wavy line projected back on the huge screen behind him.
He turned out a lava lamp and, depending on how hard he pressed it, carved floating spots that changed color and shape. (
"Google should have something like this in their lobby," he joked . ". )
As the crowd began to stir, he pulled up some vacation photos and manipulated them on the display as if they were actual pictures on the desktop.
He expands and shrinks each image by separating his two index fingers or combining them together.
A few oohs and aahs came out of the floor.
Han smiled and told the assembled think tank that he rejected "we will introduce the idea of using a standard keyboard, mouse for calculation, and Windows pointer interface to a new generation.
He added: "spreading and collecting photos like many playing cards is really the way we should interact with machines.
Applause rang in the room.
Some people whistle.
Han began to feel a little big.
But he's far from finished.
Han pulled two-
The size keyboard that slowly floats on the screen.
"In this era, we have no reason to abide by physical equipment," he said . ".
"These interfaces should start to meet our requirements.
"He tapped the screen and produced dozens of blurry white balls that bounced back on the sports ground defined by his hand waving.
With a flick of the finger, a mountain landscape was pulled from satellite data, in which Han began to fly, diving from a global perspective to a continental perspective with his fingertips until the end, he travels through the narrow canyon like someone on the Xbox.
He turned his hands like a clock, tilted the entire field of view on the axis-
F16 in bucket roll.
He ended his nine.
He drew a puppet and danced with two fingers.
He basked in the sun on the rocks. star applause.
This is the best affirmation, he believes.
The moment you live
Six months later, after TED posted a video on its website, the blog circle began to focus on Han's speech.
The word is spread through thousands of blogs that either post the video on their website or point out the video on YouTube, where the video is
"I want one ! "! !
A YouTube Uber made a whining sound.
"Tell me where to buy one," the other said . ". "Holy s--t.
This is the third place.
Han's speech became one of YouTube's most popular tech videos ever.
In this age of solid self-sealing, it takes only a day or two to come up with such a powerful technology that plows under the landscape and reshapes it in its own image.
People are already betting that as long as Jeff Han remembers, he is one of them, a research scientist at the Courant Institute at New York University, has been fascinated by technology.
He even doodles at right angles, rectangles and squares ---
It looks very similar to the hieroglyphs of the circuit, which is a schematic diagram of his unconscious.
Son in the middle
South Korean immigrants in their 1970 s who migrated to the United States, took over a Jewish deli in Queens, and South Korea began to take apart the family TV VCR, "Anything flashing," 5 years old (
He still has a nasty scar because his sister knocked on his foot.
His father was not always happy with the half House.
Reassemble the appliance, but still encourage his son's technology and even let him remember the multiplication table before he went to kindergarten.
Jeff hot at summer camp
Cable golf carts and fixed campers at night fun rides are smashed Walkman in exchange for soda.
He learns violin like other Asian children.
"When he made the first laser, he was 12 years old.
His parents scribbled him to Dalton School, an elite private high school in Upper East Side of Manhattan, and then Cornell University, where he studied electrical engineering and computer science.
Han, who skipped his senior year without graduating, joined a startup that bought video conferencing technology he developed in the student age.
Ten years later, he was ready to change the face of computing.
So far, the touch screen is limited to the uninspiring kind found at ATMs or airport ticketing kiosks ---
Basically, the electronic button on the screen can recognize one finger at a time.
In contrast, Han's Touch Display redefines the way commands are sent to the computer: it uses motion and pressure at the same time--
From multiple inputs, whether it's 2 fingers or 20--
Communicate the information to the silicon brain under the display.
Industries and companies such as defense contractor Lockheed Martin, CBS News, Pixar and unknown government intelligence have been in contact with Han to master his invention.
There is no doubt that he has set up a startup to market it, a pixel of insight.
"Touch is one of the most intuitive things in the world," Han said . ".
"You can do it directly instead of removing it step by step like the mouse and keyboard.
This is a completely natural reaction. -
See an object and want to touch it.
"On a recent Tuesday afternoon, Han gave me a private demo at New York University. The 36-inch-
Since then, the wide drawing table he used at TED has evolved into a huge screen: two 8-foot-by-3-foot panels.
I noticed that the screen is not only resistant to smearing, but also durable-
Or "peanut butter," Han said.
Proved, "he didn't invent the phrase but liked it enough. opt.
In this era of self-sealing, it takes only a random genius to conceive a technology so powerful that it can play a role in the environment and in its own image.
Han taught me a model I need to know ---
Similar to the circular motion of the proofreader's deletion symbol, it pops up a pie-
Chart menu for the app.
I poked and suddenly I was in the map software overlooking the dry mountains.
Separate the two fingers and I zoom in the canyon.
Pushing them together, I slipped thousands of feet on it.
I'm not just looking at three.
Dimensional terrain, I live in it: no matter where I want to be, I can use a gesture or freely cross the entire ridge line anyway
On the roof of any city on Earth.
This is not a map task.
Korean machine is fast--much faster--
Because there is nothing between me and the data: no mouse, no cursor, no pull-down windows.
It's seamless, instant and very easy.
No manual operation required.
A colleague from New York University put his head in.
Han greeted him like most people: "Dude! ")
And told him about a producer on the phone.
Han was amused but refused the invitation to appear.
Since he became a network phenomenon, he has received a variety of quotations-
Ons, lecture requirements
An official from SPAWAR, a Naval Branch focused on Space and Naval Planning, asked about Han's cooperation.
A producer at CBS News wants to know how to use Han's touch screen in special events such as election reports.
A dance host asked him if he had a product that played music at the club.
A teenager asked him how he could become a computer engineer.
A: learn mathematics].
At the same time, I started playing the ber tech of Han again.
"Jesus," I said, panting.
"He will make a fortune.
Han overheard my laughter.
He thought of the idea.
Before reinventing the touch screen, Han was just another internet refugee at the crossroads.
BoxTop interactive, e-commerce
The service company he works for in Los Angeles has just been fired with everything else (
He called it prosperity.
The era of bubble burst: "collusion of bulls ---t").
His father was ill and he was ready himself, so he returned to New York.
He met some professors at New York University and, despite his aborted stay at Cornell University, he has been receiving a research position at Corante College for the last four years.
The scope of the project he was involved in proved the power of his brain.
Two were funded by DARPA, the Defense Advanced Research Project Bureau under the Ministry of Defense, including a project involving visual odometry: simulating his work on the bee's brain, Han has been looking for ways, let the computer know where it has been and where it is going ---
This is part of an attempt to build a flight camera that can find its way through long flights.
Han also took part in the second round of the DARPA program, which aims to create an autonomous robotic vehicle capable of crossing the terrain by learning its own experience.
Goal: perfect an unmanned ground combat vehicle that can be operated on rugged trails, in the jungle or in the desert, or woven in heavy traffic, as if it had a proficiencyOne non-
The DARPA project involves reflection measurement.
Han came up with a way to scan the materials so that they can be copied faithfully digitally.
This process usually needs to glow on a piece of fabric, say, a flag from dozens of different angles and scan each flag into a computer ---a time-
Consumer proposition.
But Han developed an elegant shortcut: he built 10 thousand flower tubes with three reflective mirrors.
After inserting the fabric sample, the oscilloscope produces 22 reflections that simulate light at different angles.
When scanning data from each reflection, the result is a sign that can form any shape--
A thing that looks like waving in the breeze, every ripple and every slight light change is rendered as a photographic precision.
The whole process takes only a fraction of the time it takes for the best computer animators in Hollywood.
Han brought a similar pragmatismit-
His attitude towards learning touch
Screen technology.
When he started working on the idea, he found that some researchers were working on interactive walls and desktops with many works of art.
But that's it.
The concept didn't make much progress compared to what happened in the 1980 s, when Microsoft researcher Bill barkton was trying to touch
Screen synthesizer.
Han said: "Most of its design is based on toys, what you are designing --
Screen like Whacka-
Mole with gestures
But they did not ask themselves what purpose it had.
I want to create something useful.
"The inspiration comes from a glass of ordinary water.
When he looked down at the water, Han noticed that the light reflected differently in the area where his hand touched the glass.
He remembers that in the fiber, the light bounces inside the cable until it appears from the other end a few miles away.
If the surface is made of glass and the light is interrupted by the finger, the light will not rebound again and it will spread ---
Some will bleed to the fingers and some will shoot down directly, which happened on his water cup.
Physicists call "total internal reflection of frustration "(
Sounds like something your therapist might say).
Han decided to work these wrong beams.
It took him hours to come up with a prototype.
"You have to have the skills to develop," he said . ".
"You can't be strict with the theory.
I feel lucky.
I walked into a lab with rough material and walked out with an available model.
"He does this by transforming a piece of clear acrylic resin and connecting the led to the side that provides the light source.
At the back, he installed an infrared camera.
When Han put his finger on the temporary screen, some light reflected straight down as he thought, and the camera took pixels of the Pixel's light image.
The harder he is, the more information the camera captures.
In theory, Han can design software to measure the shape and size of each contact and specify a series of coordinates that define it.
Essentially, each contact point becomes a different area on a graph.
"It's like a thumb fingerprint scanner, and after zooming in, wrap all 10 or more fingers together.
It converts touch into light.
"It can also scale the image appropriately, so the image gets bigger if he separates the photo with two fingers.
"People want this technology and they want it very much," said Douglas Edric Stanley, inventor of his own touch --
Professor of Digital Art for screen "hypertable" and Aixen-
Art Institute of Provence, France.
"One of the things that Jeff Han's system excites me is that, thanks to the level of infrared rays that go through the surface of the image, it can not only track the position of your hand, but also track the contact pressure, it may even be possible to track the way your hands approach the screen.
These are amazing little details that almost provide you with everything you need to move the touchable image away from a pure pointand-click logic.
"Han started writing software to demonstrate some of the features of the touch screen, running them on a standard Microsoft Windows operating system.
Meanwhile, New York University doctoral candidate Philip Davidson was excited about the project and quickly became the lead software developer for the project.
The first thing the couple did was modify NASA World Wind, a free Google Earth--type open-
SOURCE mapping program. (
Han believes that the army will be keen on anything that works faster, because Minute and second means the difference between life and death. )
Then they create a photo manipulator that allows you to upload photos from either Flickr or anywhere else on the Web (
Can also do 2-
D image is displayed as 3-D).
A classification tool makes it easy to navigate the illustrated branches of the linnai classification system, from animals and plants to every known species, see how these families make up and relate to each other on one screen. (
They are considering extending it to home spectrum and analysis of social networks. )
Multi-dimensional graphics and charts help you visualize spreadsheet data and move them from one point in time to another, while shape sketches allow you to draw-
Screen as easily as possible on paper with a pencil--
These shapes are then animated immediately.
Along this road, may attract Bart Simpson
Sift through and guide the computer in what you want him to do.
"As computers become more and more powerful, computer graphics have grown to the point where photos can be created --
Han said: "The image of reality.
"The bottleneck is not, how do we make the pixels more beautiful, how do we get in touch with them more," said Bill barkton, today's computer assumes you're Napoleon, hiding your left hand in a suit, he is the father of a multi-touch screen.
"But a lot of things do better with two hands. Multiple-
The sensor touch screen bridges the physical and virtual worlds.
"Note that this does not mean that the touch screen will completely replace the computer mouse, the QWERTY keyboard, or the traditional graphical user interface (or GUI)
The movie made the theater disappear and TV replaced the radio.
Everyone continues to do what it does best.
Your iPod or phone may be OK for short music videos, but you may not want to watch both-
An hour movie.
"These media belong to their proper area and are displaced in areas where they are not the best," said barkton . ".
Han really doesn't know his map software, photo manipulator, or any one that will eventually be used ---
These applications are actually proof of the concept, not the purpose itself.
Don Norman, a professor at Northwestern University and author of the book emotional design, said: "When unexpected uses appear, this is when it becomes exciting and takes off . ".
After all, Thomas Edison believes that the phonograph will bring about a paperless office.
The merchant will record the letter in the mail and send a wax CD.
The Internet was not invented to serve the public and become a pillar of business and commerce.
In January, Han was scheduled to ship his first screen to a branch of the military.
He didn't take a penny of his venture capital, so his company is already in trouble.
At the same time, no matter where touch
Leading screen technology, Han will face fierce competition.
Microsoft has been working on its own version, TouchLight, which provides an echo of Spielberg's science fiction.
The sci-fi film "dispatch report".
GE Healthcare, which produces MRI machines, is using touch lights licensed from Eon Reality for 3-
D imaging: surgeons can slide on the screen with their hands, interact with MRI of the brain, peel off parts, and look for tumors internally (
Retail price: $50,675).
Mitsubishi's goal is a completely different market, and its DiamondTouch table is a business collaboration tool that allows a group of people to interact at the same time through the touch screen. Canada-
Based on smart technology, creating a good niche market to sell interactive whiteboards to three branches of universities, companies and even the United StatesS.
Military briefing.
Panasonic has been working on wall-size touch-
Like Accenture, a consulting firm, the screen display has attracted passengers at O'Hare and Kennedy airports.
Apple has applied for several patents in the field and there are rumors that the company will certainly not confirm that it will provide touch soonscreen iPod.
But Korea is not worried.
On January, he will ship his first wall screen to a branch of the military (
He wouldn't say which one.
They are paying for the military. -
"Six figures," he said.
His company will also provide consulting services and support, which will generate more revenue, and Han said he still has a lot of other deals to do.
He didn't take a penny of venture capital, so his company went bankrupt even before he rented the office.
In addition, as the cost of the camera and screen decreases, the interactive display will inevitably be built into the walls, shops, schools, subways, taxis.
In fact, the screen can be as thin as wallpaper, but durable enough to handle the most discerning users.
Not everyone agrees with Han.
Ben Shneiderman is a professor of computer science at the University of Maryland and a founding director of human beings
The Computer Interaction Lab called Han a "great performer" who "opened the door to exciting possibilities ".
"But he thinks Han's technology is not suitable for large enterprises . "
Expanding the scale of consumer products is not as useful as the mouse on a large display.
If you're standing in front of the screen, Shneiderman wants to know what the people behind you will think of what you're doing, the Korean counter, is to have the demonstrators simply remove his ass.
Another: Using drafting-
As Han did at TED, project the image on the wallsize screen.
But criticism like this is millions of light years from Han's mind.
We're in his messy office at New York University.
Books are placed on the shelves, and a string of wires are displayed on the floor.
The computer circuit board is split in half (
He never lost the screws a long time ago)
The nearby whiteboard contains blueprints and sketches of the touch screen, as well as clever tricks for hacking code.
Han is explaining why he is making sense pixels.
"I want to create an environment where I can create technology, hand it over to someone else for marketing, and then turn to other technologies so I can keep innovating," he said.
"I want to be a continuous entrepreneur: incubate an idea and turn it into a good state and make it a promoter of the next state.
This is the fantasy of every researcher.