Microsoft's Infrared Keyboard Gives Gesture Control to an Average PC


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Microsoft's Infrared Keyboard Gives Gesture Control to an Average PC
 

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Your laptop's trackpad gestures are great, but they make your desktop computer's keyboard-and-mouse combo feel old-fashioned. Microsoft's prototype keyboard changes that, cramming infrared sensors between the keys to allow hand gesture control without ever leaving the home keys.

 

 

The 64 infrared proximity sensors powering the prototype keyboard have a very low resolution, but with a super-fast refresh rate of 300Hz, they can track rapid hand movement without difficulty. As seen in the video above, the keyboard (which looks like an Apple, rather than Microsoft product) recognizes swipe-to-scroll, pinch-to-zoom, and gestures to switch between programs.

 

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The research project, "Type-Hover-Swipe in 96 Bytes," was presented at this week's Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems in Toronto. While Microsoft doesn't indicate any concrete plans for production, it definitely looks more practical than Leap Motion, which seemed super-cool, but ended up being kind of clunky in real-world use. In the future, your keyboard will be your mouse.

 

Source: Gizmodo

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interesting concept to say the least

 

not sure if it would be useful or an annoyance in real use though

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Someone should tell Microsoft what a mechanical keyboard is... Rubber domes don't qualify.

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It'd be interesting to try out and see if it works good or not.   I'd like to see them bring more things from MSR over to the market, though in most cases only parts of projects have tended to find their way into other things.   Wouldn't be surprised if this turns into a new Surface type cover for example.

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