It's like MacGuyver went into personal computers. The MIT Media Lab's Nathan Linder combined a desk lamp, a PC, a camera, and pico-projector into a stealthily futuristic user interface that works on any surface. The projector shows an interface on a desk, wall, or any other object, serving as a display. The camera watches the projected surface and measures objects that disrupt the surface, like hands moving over the display. It translates those disruptions into input, letting users press buttons, type, and move objects around on the projected display.
The entire camera-projector assembly is called the LuminAR Bulb, and it can be screwed into any light bulb socket and controlled wirelessly. That alone is incredibly impressive. An articulated robot arm built out of a desk lamp forms the LuminAR Lamp, the second half of the LuminAR system. The arm can track movement, following the user's gestures to project the LuminAR Bulb's interface onto any surface nearby, moving with the user.
(http://i26.tinypic.com/mnc4y.jpg)
So how did they build this thing? Watch it in action below.
The system was hacked together using Microsoft's Lifecam Show webcam coupled with a Microvision Show VX pico-projector. Of course, it's all the neat MIT-level programming things that makes it work, so unless you are familiar with coding bleeding-edge computer interfaces, you probably can't build it yourself out of stuff from Best Buy.
LuminAR (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XV5V-dQW8CI&feature=player_embedded#normal)
(http://i27.tinypic.com/2u5du06.jpg)
enlarge (http://i32.tinypic.com/70i4g5.jpg)
Like so many projects from the MIT Media Lab, LuminAR is purely a conceptual demonstration and won't be turned into a commercial product any time soon. It's part of the Media Lab's Fluid Interfaces Group, a sub-section of the Media Lab dedicated to finding new and creative ways to let users interact with computers.
Projected interfaces have a lot of potential for practical applications. For computers, they could display a dynamically changing interface that replaces a keyboard and mouse, altering key layouts and allowing direct manipulation of files and objects. For home use, they could become a new generation of remote controls, projecting an impossible-to-lose, flexible menu system that lets the user interact with any connected device like an HDTV, Blu-ray player, A/V receiver, or even HVAC system.
While LuminAR and other FIG projects won't show up on America's desks in their current forms, the concepts they explore could influence how we use computers years and decades from now. Since these devices can be built from mostly off-the-shelf parts today, tomorrow they might show up as seamless, fabricated pieces of equipment anyone can pick up from an electronics store.