Graduate students use hand gestures and motions on a simple tabletop to input various commands into the computer at Purdue’s C-Design lab. Infrared depth sensors (in the white bar on the table's far side) measure the position of hands and fingers in 3-D space. An image-processing algorithm tracks and interprets hand gestures and motions over time. | C-Design Lab/Purdue University
The next step in touch-screens may be to ditch the actual screen, according to researchers at Purdue University. Engineers Karthik Ramani and Niklas Elmqvist and their colleagues recently unveiled a projector-based computer input system that can transform desks, office walls, or even kitchen islands into interactive surfaces.