Touchscreen Interface by Fujitsu Turns Paper Into Touchscreen

Fujitsu Laboratories is busy in making future gadgets and gizmos. The company also showed its Invisible tablet keyboard and High-Tech GPS walking cane at MWC in February. Well, they’re back with even better technology that will definitely make you drool! This time, the Multinational Japanese company is showing off its latest innovation that lays a touch-based interface over real world objects like, Paper etc.

The new technology gives you the ability to use any real world object as if you were using a touchscreen device. The new tech dubbed as “Touchscreen interface” reads your finger motions with the help of a webcam, projector and other computer hardware; and lets you manipulate real world objects the same way you would on your touch-screen device like a smartphone, tablet, etc.

Fujitsu Laboratories has accomplished this daunting task with a fairly low resolution webcam, with just 320 x 180 pixel resolutions and a projector. The Japanese company projects an interface onto a real world surface such as paper, and then with the help of the camera, tracks the movement of your fingers as well as the shape of the object to determine what action should be performed. As you can see in the demo video below, Fujitsu rep easily crops out a photo on the piece of printed paper by putting the sheet under the device and using his fingers to crop out only the photo into the interface projected onto the paper.

[youtube=”https://www.youtube.com/v/I2l0qklSzks”]

Touchscreen Paper Could Replace Standard Scanners

We think paper and many other objects could be manipulated by touching them, as with a touchscreen. This system doesn’t use any special hardware; it consists of just a device like an ordinary webcam, plus a commercial projector. Its capabilities are achieved by image processing technology.  – said Fujitsu.

In addition to touch-based controls, the device is smart enough to recognize gestures as well. As you will notice towards the end of the demo video, the Fujitsu rep uses his fist to rotate the 3D rendering. So, it will be pretty useful for manipulating computer animated objects with simple gestures.

According to DigiInfo, the company expects to bring the new device to the market by 2014. Fujitsu thinks that the touchscreen interface will make it easy to fill out forms at your local City Hall.

We think this system could be used to show detailed information at a travel agent’s counter, or when you need to fill in forms at City Hall.

What are your thoughts on this new Touchscreen interface? Do you have any cool ways to use the device? Share your creativity with us.