Media Interaction Lab

Cebit, an annual trade show for information and telecommunications technology, was the second destination on our trip to the north of Germany. Jakob spent one day wandering around looking at the bleeding edge of IT-technology presented in over 20 exibition halls. Continue reading to see more pictures and interesting links.

Three things interested me the most at Cebit: multi touch-, display- and pen technology: So here come my impressions:

Multitouch:

Propelled trough big commercial projects like Jeff Han’s Perceptive Pixel and Microsoft’s Surface and research communities like the NUI-group with more than 1000 registered users, multitouch tables and walls pop up everywhere on the globe. Here are some examples seen at the Cebit:

Yes, it was there, although not for the general public: the Microsoft Surface table. After some convincing and with some (a lot) of help from my girlfriend the Microsoft people would finally allow us to see the Table, hidden on the first level of the Microsoft booth, protected by some suits with earplugs. In a slightly dim environment a selected group of people could play around with the treasure which not even a lot of Microsoft-employees have had a chance to see yet. Unfortunately featuring the same applications as seen on the website, the table was not as impressive as assumed, probably also because of the crooked posture of the lucky users. Still, packaging is sweet and lighting conditions seemed to be pretty bright as well!

Interactive Scape is the name of this white beauty, featuring an impressive 1080p resolution an very nice packaging as well. Developed by Werk 5 Mangold Helmer this multitouch table can already be bought, price information is “on request” however. In the bright environment of the exhibition halls the table lacked in brightness and contrast, most of the projected images were barley visible, still the resolution is top of its class and the overall hight of the rear-projection table was very impressive. No information on the projector though. Check out the video on the website for more information.

Germany’s “Bundesministerium für Bildung und Forschung” showed up with two multi touch tables, the winner project (see image)of the well-known “Jugend forscht” youth-competition and it bigger brother developed by the Fraunhofer IGD, creatively named “Multi touch table”. Unfortunately only the youthful table worked, showcasing impressive 70s Pong graphics. Its professional brother was still in maintenance when I visited the booth. More information can be found also on the website instantreality ware.

The most impressive multitouch installations however could be found at the monumental booth of “Deutsche Telekom”. At the booth both an interactive multi touch table and a massive multi touch wall were presented, visualizing various products of the company. Developed by Q~bus, especially the interactive wall convinced with super-fast and stable tracking, it’s size and brightness. Unfortunately I was so impressed, if forgot to take a photo… and no further information could be found on the net so far.

Display:

Just having finished our new rear projection table I was especially interested in future display technologies which could be used for the next generation of Flux. Well, good news is projectors are getting more affordable, bad news is that short throw 1080p Projectors are still missing and most manufacturers comments suggested that there aren’t going to be any in near future. Maybe it’s better to skip projection technologies anyway and use OLED-displays instead (see image). These three screens where shown at the Samsung booth, impressing with great viewing angle, size and thinness.

Pen:

Apart from looking at displays and multi-touch projects I was also looking at various digital pens. However no interesting news there. Besides several pens which need a special clip-on receiver which gets mounted on a sheet of paper and several tablet-like boards which capture handwriting some new, cheaper Wacom graphics tablets with integrated displays were showcased. More interesting was Logitech’s MX Air which I could finally try and which I liked a lot.

To sum up the visit to Cebit… a lot of walking, a lot of people and far to little time but a really rewarding experience! Check out also the rest of the images which can be found in the gallery below:

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