We are working on a multi-touch “operating system”, which is really a Java Application shell. It will run on nearly any computer (with JMF or QT). We have abstract video sources (currently JMF), single or multiple camera support (stitching), pluggable blog/object detection (so you can use a processor that works better for any number of detection methods via camera).
The whole detection system sits under a modified swing environment that is modified to be (1) rotatable - you are able to rotate an entire swing UI (2) mutli-touch aware. Other than that, if you can program for Swing, you can program for Open Table.
We don’t have it working yet, but you should be able to take an existing swing application and run it in the table environment. For traditional Swing applications, we will simply send the touch events to the swing applications as mouse events - only allowing one mouse to interact with the application at a time. You will also be able to rotate the application to point in any direction. (So it can be shared.)
We are also including a gesture library and the means to define your own gestures - gestures will be propagated to display components via the standard eventing framework already included in swing. This will allow a gesture to be tied to a mnemonic (cool?).
In addition to being stewards of this open source project, we are also contracting with some furniture manufacturers to produce kits (think Ikea, with circuit boards) so that you can make your own - and you won’t have to put together a wood shop to do this. We plan on offering kits that allow you to put in your own PC, projector, etc - you can get a base kit (wood and glass), a kit with some extra junk (circuit boards, diffusers, camera mounts), or go for the whole enchilada (PC, projector, camera, software, etc.). We are still talking to our lawyers about patent issues with this, though - so final offerings may be different than what is described here. This way, you can use vvvv or Open NSI or whatever, and not have to worry about a box to hold it all. Hey - our first prototype was a cardboard box with a couple sheets of Lexan. We understand.
Our furniture designer is working with us to produce some sexy stuff (jet black, smooth glass… ah...), as well as some practical things - think office furniture and store kiosks. Personally, I cant wait to get my coffee table to talk to MythTV… I will never loose another friggin’ remote control again ah.... bliss.
We are starting out with a reflected IR setup (mainly because you can do more interesting designs this way - I, personally, like the look of the completely flat table top with no “border"), but we also have a FTIR scheme in the works. We have found that we can use our pluggable detections routines to allow for the operator to switch between the two schemes to allow for optimal detection.
Being written in Java - and tested on Mac, PC (XP & some Vista), as well as Linux (I’m a Red Hat guy, personally) - we are working out any kinks with the cross platform as we go along. We can’t, obviously, use JMF on OS X - thus the pluggable camera architecture (it’s our ImageProvider class, I believe).
We’re still early on, but we’ve got a solid plan, some corporate backing, and a lame (right now) web site.
http://www.open-table.org
I’m a little busy putting things together ~ but I will answer any questions that I can. My cohort on this thing, Charlie, is a real live rocket scientist. He’s doing the image processing part. If you have questions of him, shot him an e-mail too (see his blog - I believe he has some contact information there - it’s not my place to go handing out his contact information willy-nilly).
There you go - one more for the stack.
So, forgive me if my only post so far is a self promotion - I will contribute when I have better stuff to share.
Kind regards,
+Michael Riecken
Steward, Open Table project
