My newest project: breaking interface boundaries. A couple of my friends at work and I have decided to build a multi-touch table based on the technique of frustrated total internal reflection (FTIR). This can be described by a diagram easier than words, so here we go:

This design for multi-touch interfaces has been popularized by Jeff Han, a researcher from NYU. Infrared LEDs are placed around two sides of a sheet of acrylic, causing the IR light to be reflected within it. Then, when a finger or object touches it, the light is “frustrated” and refracts off of the object and out of the acrylic. An IR camera below the screen then sees this as a blob of IR light which can be interpreted by a computer for recognition of gestures, touches, and movement.

This is a very exciting and fun project with which to be involved. The potential is amazing—multi-touch interfaces are the next paradigm in computing and will replace standard keyboard and mouse input in the relatively near future. My friends and I decided to document our progress as we build our devices and software, so we created the uNUI Group site as an extension of the NUI Group community. Check out the Resources page for links, blogs and videos about what we and the community are doing—we’d also love to hear your feedback.