BUFFALO, N.Y. — With the tap of a single finger, computer users soon may be drawn deeper into the virtual world using a new device developed in the University at Buffalo's Virtual Reality Lab.

UB researchers say their "Fingertip Digitizer," which users wear on the tip of the index finger, can transfer to the virtual world the meaning and intent of common hand gestures, such as pointing, wagging the finger, tapping in the air or other movements that can be used to direct the actions of an electronic device, much like a mouse directs the actions of a personal computer, but with greater precision.

What's more, the Fingertip Digitizer can transfer to personal computers very precise information about the physical characteristics of an object — and even can sense the shape and size of a human gland or tumor — when a user taps, scratches, squeezes, strokes or glides a finger over the surface of the object.

"The gesture-recognition function of this device, in particular, has great potential for a wide range of applications, from personal computing to medical diagnostics to computer games," says Young-Seok Kim, who received his doctoral degree in mechanical engineering from UB in May. Kim created the Fingertip Digitizer with Thenkurussi Kesavadas, director of UB's Virtual Reality Lab and associate professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering in the UB School of Engineering and Applied Sciences.

According to Kesavadas, the Fingertip Digitizer will help bridge the gap between what a person knows and what a computer knows.

"With this device a computer, cell phone or computer game could read human intention more naturally," he explains. "Eventually the Fingertip Digitizer may be used as a high-end substitute for a mouse, a keyboard or a joystick."

Kim and Kesavadas will demonstrate a prototype of the Fingertip Digitizer at the SIGGRAPH2006 technology conference July 30 through Aug. 3 in Boston. They expect the Fingertip Digitizer and related software to be market- ready within three years.

The creators of the year's best research innovations in computer graphics and interactive techniques are invited to SIGGRAPH2006, the largest conference of its type in the world. For information, go to http://www.siggraph.org/s2006/main.php?f=conference&p=etech&s=fingertip.

The Fingertip Digitizer is a major enhancement in haptic technology, an emerging field focused on bringing a sense of touch to technological devices, according to Kim and Kesavadas. Most haptic tools on the market are designed as probes and are gripped like a pen. They can be difficult to manipulate and therefore may not give a precise representation of the object the user is feeling.

The Fingertip Digitizer's design, the researchers explain, is modeled after the biomechanical properties of a finger, which means it can more accurately and intuitively sense the physical properties of an object. To sense touch and movement, the device uses a force sensor, an accelerometer and a motion tracker — all contained in thimble-sized device that fits comfortably on a user's finger.

A real-time, multi-rate data acquisition system used with the Fingertip Digitizer reads the force feedback exerted by an object as it is touched by the user. To read hand gestures, the system tracks the acceleration and location of the fingertip device as the finger moves and gestures.

A touch screen is not required. With the device attached to the fingertip, the user simply would gesture in the air as he looks at a computer screen where a software program or computer game may be running. In this way, the user can direct the opening or moving of an electronic file, for example. Using the device as a computer-game accessory, the user could imitate the squeezing of a trigger or the stroking of pool cue, for example, say Kim and Kesavadas.

A provisional patent application has been filed on the device.  

The researchers are developing Touch Painter and Touch Canvas software to accompany the Fingertip Digitizer. Using this software and the Fingertip Digitizer, the user will be able to apply digital paint to a computer-screen canvas with a few flicks or taps of the index finger.

For more information about the UB Virtual Reality Lab, go to http://www.vrlab.buffalo.edu.

The University at Buffalo is a premier research-intensive public university, the largest and most comprehensive campus in the State University of New York.

By - Chris Davies

After Apple’s drearily uninteresting Bumnote, sorry, Keynote earlier this month, I’ve been waiting for my electronic twiddly bits to get perked up by some exciting tech news. I think today might be the day…

“The real meaning of this product is about opening up the channels between hand, eyes, and device, and giving people access to actions and information in a way not possible with conventional buttons” [Brian Conner, Pilotfish]

To call the Onyx touchscreen-based is to do it a disservice; in fact, it uses Synaptics innovative ClearPad technology, the first transparent touch-sensitive capacitive sensor. ClearPad is capable of recognizing not only points and taps but also shapes and complex movements, together with multi-point input. At 0.5mm thick, the sensor layer can recognize touch and gestures through up to 1.6mm of plastic, making it far more durable and optically clear than traditional multi-layer touchscreens. And above and beyond those touchscreens it can recognize one or two finger contact, a finger used on its side, or even different body parts; a phone call to Onyx can be answered by simply holding it to your cheek, messages sent by swiping them off the screen with the whole finger.

CREATING NEW WAYS FOR GADGETS, HUMANS TO INTERACT

By Elise Ackerman

Mercury News

The two designers from Yahoo stood ready to test a new user interface at the Sunnyvale company's headquarters Monday afternoon.

“Gentlemen, start your licking,'' commanded North Pitney, a graduate student at the California College of the Arts.

Vigorously applying pink tongues to heart-shaped lollipops, Lance Nishihira and Bill Scott complied. Sensors transmitted each sloppy stroke to a laptop that was controlling the movements of several robotic toys.

“I'm trying to think which one of our properties can be driven by a lollipop,'' joked Scott, a member of Yahoo's platform design group. “Maybe Yahoo Games.''

The “Edible Interface'' was one of 10 prototypes featured at Yahoo's University Design Expo, an annual event that explores how humans interact with technology.

“They are really wacky, creative ideas that make us think about the future,'' said Joy Mountford, a senior director of the expo who launched the event 17 years ago at Apple Computer.

At the time, Mountford managed Apple's Human Interface Group. She needed creative, technically adept people to develop the next generation of computer technology. Skilled engineers were not hard to find, but Mountford was looking for brilliant geeks who were also artists.

She began holding the expo to identify talent and promote new ways of thinking about computers and design. Over the years, she estimated, 1,800 students participated. Some ended up at tech companies like Apple or Yahoo. Others ended up teaching at places like the Interactive Telecommunications Program at New York University's Tisch School of the Arts.

Five students from Tisch have brought a project they call the “Soap Box News Network'' to Yahoo this year. They want to create a platform where citizen journalists can work together and create television-quality video programs that challenge traditional broadcast media, explained Summer Bedard.

George Grinsted, the inventor of BlogRadio and a recent graduate of the Royal College of Art in London doesn't want to challenge the old media as much as to explore the new media. He has written computer code that searches the Web for audio that has been posted to blogs. The snippets are then broadcast to the world from http://home.imgeorge.org/blogradio .

“These posts are really human,'' Grinsted said. “You hear people in the most bizarre circumstances.'' For example, there is the person who can't sleep because the neighbors are making so much noise in the middle of the night. There is someone chirping. Someone stuck in traffic. Someone looking for the perfect handle for their kitchen cabinet.

The broadcast never stops, and that's part of its beauty.

Or in the case of a project submitted by three students from the University of California-Los Angeles, the beauty of their broadcast is it always stops.

“Deadends,'' features videos of dead-end streets from all over Los Angeles, a city the group views as “the ultimate dead end of the western world.'' Artist Pascual Sisto said his partners are hoping to expand the project to include dead-end destinations from every corner of the globe via a Web site, www.deadendproject.com .

For Kate Richards, of the California College of the Arts, the expo project was the first time she had incorporated technology into her art. Her interface combined grass, video and a glittering bug made out of found objects.

By running their fingers over the grass, people passing by can send the bug skittering over a smooth surface. The movements also trigger a video showing the world from a bug's perspective.

While the ideas may seem far out, Larry Tesler, vice president of user experience and design at Yahoo, said they can help Yahoo employees see where technology could be headed. “These students will be going into industry with these ideas,'' he noted.

“In the future, computers won't look like computers any more,'' Mountford said.

It looks almost like any other shopping cart, except sensors allow it to follow the shopper around the supermarket and slow down when needed so items can be placed in it, and it never crashes into anyone's heels.

Gregory Garcia dreamed up the robotic cart to solve a childhood peeve of being accidentally hit with shopping carts by his sister.

His cart, also known as B.O.S.S. for Battery Operated Smart Servant, was one of about 30 robots on display Wednesday by students at the University of Florida, who worked the past semester on the projects using their engineering backgrounds.

''The immediate thing that jumped to my mind was all those times as a kid when my sister would accidentally hit me with a cart,'' Garcia said. ''It seems like the public would really want this since everybody shops.

Jeremy Greene, 23, of Panama City, created a robot named Atlas, which balances a blue ping pong ball on a flat piece of wood as it moves across the room. He said he sees no real world application for his robot other than entertainment.

When the electric engines of Antoin Baker's robot Cypher roared to life, the device lifted about a foot off a table, tethered by rubber bands. Cypher, a flat wooden square topped four engines, could be made into a flying device to lift heavy objects in the same way a helicopter does, Baker said.

''If the rubber bands break, run very fast,'' said Eric Schwartz, one of the two professors in the robot course.

Rolando Desrets' small robot made of wheels, gears and sensors, picks up pingpong balls. It then aims and tosses into a basketball net. He said he will later use the robot to compete against other colleges.

Students were given free rein in deciding the type of robot to construct. Robots range from Carlo Pasco's poker robot that deals cards to poker players to Bryan Talenfeld's invention that tells color blind people the color of a traffic light.

''My friends and I play poker all the time, but there is one kid who we do not deal because he is notorious for dealing from the bottom of the deck,'' Pasco wrote in his introduction about his robot. ''An automated poker dealer would take the doubt out of human dealing, alleviating this problem once and for all.''

The student-built submarine called the SubjuGator 5 has won first place for two years in a row in competition with other universities.

The robot is a clear tube about two feet long. It has cameras and sensors it uses to follow a simulated pipeline, said student Carlos Francis, 24, of Gainesville.

Francis said similar robotic submarines could be used to check underwater pipelines and could send back pictures to people on land or in boats.

Topped with a wig of dredlocks and a colorful hat, one of the most popular robots is Koolio. The robot delivers cold drinks to faculty and students who order them over the Internet.

Adam Grieper has a similar robot called the Beertender, which senses people and offers them a beer.

''At this university, every piece of the robot puzzle has been solved,'' Schwartz said.

He said students have designed flying, walking and swimming robots.

About half of the students are registered for the summer 2005 semester of the Intelligent Machine Design Laboratory course. The other half are students in the Machine Intelligence Laboratory or students in the MIL's National Science Foundation sponsored Research Experience for Undergraduate program.

UF students have been building autonomous mobile robots since 1993 ranging from submarines to helicopters, from planes to snakes, and from hydrofoils to alligators. Most of the students showing robots Wednesday were seniors in engineering or graduate students.

(AP Photo/University of Florida, Kristen Bartlett) :: This photo provided by the University of Florida shows Gregory Garcia, a mechanical engineering graduate student, demonstrating his robot, the BOSS or the Battery Operated Smart Servant, Wednesday, Aug. 9, 2006, during Robot Demo Day in Gainesville, Fla. The robot is programmed to recognize and follow a certain color. The event allows students to demonstrate their projects to the public while being graded for their work.

Guide dogs may soon be out of a job thanks to a high-tech set of glasses and shoes invented by scientists to help blind people navigate the trickiest of terrain.

Researchers at Hong Kong Polytechnic University say the glasses and shoes, which have a built-in computer, detect objects within close proximity through echo location then send a vibrating warning to the wearer.

"Ultrasonic waves are sent out and when they bounce back they are interpreted by a receiver, Research Institute of Innovative Products and Technologies Director Wallace Leung Woon-fong, told Hong Kong's Sunday Morning Post.

"Once an obstacle is detected the shoes will vibrate, perhaps increasing in intensity as the obstacle gets closer," he added.

The shoes will use GPS (Global Positioning System) to tell the wearer where he is and which direction he is going in.

"The shoe will be able to detect steps, holes in the road and obstacles within a 5-centimetre vertical distance," Leung said.

The innovations are based on the award winning "electronic bat ears" sonic glasses developed by the university's Professor He Jufang, which use similar technology to relay information such as size and distance of an object to the wearer.

But some blind people have expressed reservations about the inventions.

"There are so many bumps in Hong Kong's roads. If I wear the shoes I will end up shaking and vibrating all day," said Chow Wing-cheung.