macnn
05/02/2008, 4:50pm, EDT
Friday, May 2nd
17-year old develops multi-touch interface for Mac
Bridger Maxwell – a 17-year old from Orem, Utah – is currently developing a home-built multi-touch surface for Mac OS X, using a Frustrated Total Internal Reflection (FTIR) imaging method for a high school science project. Already creating a second incarnation, Maxwell improves on his previous design by using brighter LEDs mounted in a wooden frame. He uses an infrared camera to capture finger input, which appears to light up fingertips, when observed.
The design features three sides of the wooden frame with holes drilled for the LEDs to stick through, with the infrared camera mounted underneath. Maxwell used an open source solution called OpenTouch, and built onto it by developing a library to receive "Tangible User Interface Object" messages for Apple's Cocoa platform.
Maxwell also makes use of several Mac OS technologies, such as Core Animation for the overall presentation of the device's front-end.
Filed under: peripherals
Other story tags: Mac OS X, multi-touch, project
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cool story
Wow, cool read. That will be a tough science project to beat...
FTIR
Fourier Transform Infrared Spectroscopy
Emphasis
Its funny how the older generations emphasize "17 year old" fill in the blank. Back in the day no one invented things at a young age because they didnt have such a vast and readily available thing as the internet. This will be the way things are more and more as time rolls on, since anyone can research and build things that before would have taken months in a library or an MIT degree to accomplish. GO Go gadget submit button!...
go west, young max
I'm guessing Apple will snap up this fellow right away.
multi touch
Multi touch (Mac or otherwise) will not reach it's full potential until it's combined with a full featured voice recognition component.
MN