Surface computer

A surface computer is a computer that interacts with the user through the surface of an ordinary object, rather than through a monitor, keyboard, mouse, or other physical hardware.

The term "surface computer" was first adopted by Microsoft for its PixelSense (codenamed Milan) interactive platform, which was publicly announced on 30 May 2007. Featuring a horizontally-mounted 30-inch display in a coffee table-like enclosure, users can interact with the machine's graphical user interface by touching or dragging their fingertips and other physical objects such as paintbrushes across the screen, or by setting real-world items tagged with special bar-code labels on top of it. As an example, uploading digital files only requires each object (e.g. a Bluetooth-enabled digital camera) to be placed on the unit's display. The resulting pictures can then be moved across the screen, or their sizes and orientation can be adjusted as well.

PixelSense's internal hardware includes a 2.0 GHz

. These expensive components resulted in a price tag of between $12,500 to $15,000 for the hardware.

The first PixelSense units were used as

.

See also

• Surface computing
• Table computer
• TouchLight
• Jeff Han FTIR ^[3]

References

External links

• Microsoft PixelSense