Here’s a great idea that was planned and executed perfectly. Someone came up with a motion sensor that’d replace a touchpad or a mouse for your desktop and laptop PC’s. Usually, with innovations like this, people expect a lot of glitches and room for improvement. But with the release of the Touch +, the device actually performs as promised in the proposal of the start up team behind the motion controlled device.
The device looks similar to a webcam and is meant to be attached preferably to the top of your desktop or laptop monitor with the lens facing down so it could project an invisible motion field atop your keyboard.
The device works by detecting little movements done by hand and has a pre-determined set of actions that will serve as its command sort of like the Samsungs smart tv’s or the xbox kinect. This is achieved by pairing two different cameras and programming it with an algorithm that would create a 3D sensor that projects a 100 degree field of view and an area for multi-touch of around 50cm.
The company behind this made it as ergonomically efficient as possible by doing away with the big actions like waving or the twisting of the wrist that would sooner or later cause fatigue to the user but assigned small easy gestures that can be detected within the touch area the camera provides. Any further from the field of vision of the camera, the Touch + wouldn’t react to the gesture as quick.
The genius behind this technology is also its ability to differentiate the movements done by typing on the keyboard and detecting the movements that is associated to its controls. So effectively making the keyboard kind a like your mouse pad space, all you need to do is lightly touch the keyboard and do one of the 8 points of multi-touch its capable of recognizing. The system also is able to detect the independent movement of both hands simultaneously, which expands the possibilities even more.
The Touch + can already replace the functions of both mouse or the touchpad in your laptop due to efficiency of the movements you need to make. But if you are still used to the mouse, the Touch + can be used in conjunction with it too.
The Ractiv Touch + is now available to the public at $75.
