Microsoft Surface

Enter the world of next-regeneration computer interface. Forget your age old mouse and keyboard. Its about having a hands on experience. Yes Minority Report style.

Microsoft has come up with a table top computer, this new product, which goes by Surface, uses touch as the only method of input, and allows you to do such things as paint the table by using your finger as a virtual paint brush. It puts people in control of their experiences with technology, making everyday tasks entertaining, enjoyable and efficient. Imagine ordering a beverage during a meal with just the tap of a finger. Imagine quickly browsing through music and dragging favorite songs onto a personal playlist by moving a finger across the screen. Imagine creating and sending a personal postcard of vacation pictures instantly to friends and family, while still wearing flip-flops.

Surface also features the ability to recognize physical objects that have identification tags similar to bar codes. This means that when a customer simply sets a wine glass on the surface of a table, a restaurant could provide them with information about the wine they’re ordering, pictures of the vineyard it came from and suggested food pairings tailored to that evening’s menu. The experience could become completely immersive, letting users’ access information on the wine-growing region and even look at recommended hotels and plan a trip without leaving the table.

Surface reduces the consumer pains of dealing with the frustrating mess of cables, drivers and protocols that people must use to link their peripheral devices to their personal computers. Surface has no cables or external USB ports for plugging in peripherals. For that matter, it has no keyboard, no mouse, no trackball — no obvious point of interaction except its screen.

Inside the Surface

Surface features a touch interface, but it doesn’t use a touch screen. Instead, five separate cameras are used to record motion on the table’s surface. Five cameras were needed because of field angle issues. In order to get the table as low as it is, five cameras are used so that each one can have a small field of view. That translates into better resolution and speed (measured in pixels/second) than a single camera with an exceptionally wide-angle view of the table surface.

The five cameras are near-infrared devices, but that’s not because they are trying to read heat signatures from fingertips (or other body parts) on the table. Instead, it’s because the entire surface of Surface is bathed in light; by illuminating the top of the table, the cameras can easily see when things are placed on it. Shining colored light across the surface of the table would spoil the effect that Microsoft wants, so near-infrared light is used for invisible illumination.

Those cameras, which are located below the acrylic surface of the table, can read a nearly infinite number of simultaneous touches, and are limited only by processing power. Surface has been optimized for 52 touches—enough for four people to use all 10 fingers at once and still have 12 objects sitting on the table.

The hidden PC

Surface currently runs on a high-end PC but uses mainly conventional components. It’s powered by a Core 2 Duo chip and a “newish video card,” and the system runs on 2GB of RAM. Surface runs on a standard Vista installation with a layer of code on top that is specific to the project; the underlying operating system has not been modified in any way.

For communications, Surface features a standard Ethernet connection, WiFi, and Bluetooth, which opens the door to some incredibly slick-looking applications. Surface automatically establishes WiFi connections with Zunes placed on the table and could be used as a music kiosk or a way to push narrated tours to museum patrons.

Surface computing at Microsoft is an outgrowth of a collaborative effort between the Microsoft Hardware and Microsoft Research teams, which were struck by the opportunity to create technology that would bridge the physical and virtual worlds. What started as a high-level concept grew into a prototype and evolved to today’s market-ready product that will transform the way people shop, dine, entertain and live. It’s a major advancement that moves beyond the traditional user interface to a more natural way of interacting with information.