Microsoft Surface is a surface computing platform that responds to natural hand gestures and real world objects. It has a 360-degree user interface, a 30 in (76 cm) reflective surface with a XGA DLP projector underneath the surface which projects an image onto its underside, while five cameras in the machine's housing record reflections of infrared light from objects and human fingertips on the surface. The surface is capable of object recognition, object/finger orientation recognition and tracking, and is multi-touch and is multi-user. Users can interact with the machine by touching or dragging their fingertips and objects such as paintbrushes across the screen, or by placing and moving placed objects. This paradigm of interaction with computers is known as a natural user interface (NUI).
Surface has been optimized to respond to 52 touches at a time. During a demonstration with a reporter, Mark Bolger, the Surface Computing group's marketing director, "dipped" his finger in an on-screen paint palette, then dragged it across the screen to draw a smiley face. Then he used all 10 fingers at once to give the face a full head of hair.
Using the specially-designed barcode-style "Surface tags" on objects, Microsoft Surface can offer a variety of features, for example automatically offering additional wine choices tailored to the dinner being eaten based on the type of wine set on the Surface, or in conjunction with a password, offering user authentication.
A commercial Microsoft Surface unit is $12,500 (unit only), whereas a developer Microsoft Surface unit costs $15,000 and includes a developer unit, five seats and support.
Partner companies use the Surface in their hotels, restaurants, and retail stores. The Surface is used to choose meals at restaurants, plan vacations and spots to visit from the hotel room. Starwood Hotels plan to allow users to drop a credit card on the table to pay for music, books, and other amenities offered at the resort. In AT&T stores, use of the Surface include interactive presentations of plans, coverage, and phone features, in addition to dropping two different phones on the table and having the customer be able to view and compare prices, features, and plans. MSNBC's coverage of the 2008 US presidential election used Surface to share with viewers information and analysis of the race leading up to the election. The anchor analyzes polling and election results, views trends and demographic information and explores county maps to determine voting patterns and predict outcomes, all with the flick of his finger. In some hotels and casinos, users can do a range of things, such as watch videos, view maps, order drinks, play games, and chat and flirt with people between Surface tables.
History
The product idea for Surface was initially conceptualized in 2001 by Steven Bathiche of Microsoft Hardware and Andy Wilson of Microsoft Research.
In October 2001, DJ Kurlander, Michael Kim, Joel Dehlin, Bathiche and Wilson formed a virtual team to bring the idea to the next stage of development.
In 2003, the team presented the idea to the Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates, in a group review. Later, the virtual team was expanded and a prototype nicknamed T1 was produced within a month. The prototype was based on an IKEA table with a hole cut in the top and a sheet of architect vellum used as a diffuser. The team also developed some applications, including pinball, a photo browser and a video puzzle. Over the next year, Microsoft built more than 85 early prototypes for Surface. The final hardware design was completed in 2005.
A similar concept was used in the 2002 science fiction movie Minority Report. As noted in the DVD commentary, the director Steven Spielberg stated the concept of the device came from consultation with Microsoft during the making of the movie. One of the film's technology consultant's associates from MITlater joined Microsoft to work on the Surface project.
Surface was unveiled by Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer on May 30, 2007 at The Wall Street Journal's 'D: All Things Digital' conference in Carlsbad, California. Surface Computing is part of Microsoft's Productivity and Extended Consumer Experiences Group, which is within the Entertainment & Devices division. The first few companies to deploy Surface will include Harrah's Entertainment, Starwood Hotels & Resorts Worldwide, T-Mobile and a distributor,International Game Technology.
On April 17, 2008, AT&T became the first retail location to launch Surface. In June 2008 Harrah’s Entertainment launched Microsoft Surface at Rio iBar and Disneyland launched it in Tomorrowland, Innoventions Dream Home. On August 13, 2008 Sheraton Hotels introduced Surface in their hotel lobbies at 5 locations.On September 8th, 2008 MSNBC began using the Surface to work with election maps for the 2008 US Presidential Election on air. MSNBC's political director, Chuck Todd, was placed at the helm.
Features
Microsoft notes four main components being important in Surface's interface: direct interaction, multi-touch contact, a multi-user experience, and object recognition.
Direct interaction refers to the user's ability to simply reach out and touch the interface of an application in order to interact with it, without the need for a mouse orkeyboard. Multi-touch contact refers to the ability to have multiple contact points with an interface, unlike with a mouse, where there is only one cursor. Multi-user is a benefit of multi-touch—several people can orient themselves on different sides of the surface to interact with an application simultaneously. Object recognition refers to the device's ability to recognize the presence and orientation of tagged objects placed on top of it.
The technology allows non-digital objects to be used as input devices. In one example, a normal paint brush was used to create a digital painting in the software.[14] This is made possible by the fact that, in using cameras for input, the system does not rely on restrictive properties required of conventional touchscreen or touchpad devices such as the capacitance, electrical resistance, or temperature of the tool used (see Touchscreen).
The computer's "vision" is created by a near-infrared, 850-nanometer-wavelength LED light source aimed at the surface. When an object touches the tabletop, the light is reflected to multiple infrared cameras with a net resolution of 1024 x 768, allowing it to sense, and react to items touching the tabletop.
Surface will ship with basic applications, including photos, music, virtual concierge, and games, that can be customized for the customers.
A unique feature that comes preinstalled with Surface is the pond effect "Attract" application. Simply, it is a "picture" of water with leaves and rocks within it (a lot like Microsoft Surface Lagoon, included in the Surface Touch Pack). By touching the screen, users can create ripples in the water, much like a real stream. Additionally, the pressure of touch alters the size of the ripple created, and objects placed into the water create a barrier that ripples bounce off, just as they would in real life.
Specifications
Surface
Surface is a 30-inch (76 cm) display in a table-like form factor, 22 inches (56 cm) high, 21 inches (53 cm) deep, and 42 inches (107 cm) wide. The Surface tabletop is acrylic, and its interior frame is powder-coated steel. The software platform runs on a custom version of Windows Vista and has wired Ethernet 10/100, wireless 802.11 b/g, and Bluetooth 2.0 connectivity. Surface applications are written using eitherWindows Presentation Foundation or Microsoft XNA technology.
At Microsoft's MSDN Conference, Bill Gates told developers of "Maximum" setup the Microsoft Surface was going to have:
- Intel Core 2 Quad Xeon "Woodcrest" @ 2.66 GHz with a custom motherboard form factor about the size of two ATX motherboards.
- 4GB DDR2-1066 RAM
- 1TB 7200RPM Hard Drive
The discontinued (as of 6 January 2011) commercially available version had the following specifications:
- Intel Core 2 Duo @ 2.13 GHz
- 2GB DDR2 RAM
- 250GB SATA Hard Drive
Samsung's "SUR4.0 with Microsoft Surface", a third-party production of Microsoft Surface billed as "The Surface 2.0 Experience" has a 40 in (102 cm) 1080p LCD HD screen, 2.9GHz AMD Athlon II X2 processor, and Radeon HD 6700M and the Surface is 4 in (10 cm) thick. Microsoft Surface is now wall-mountable and running off a new more polished, refined, Windows 7 GUI (now including Windows Phone 7 support).
For this version Microsoft created a new technology called PixelSense. In this technology the IR sensors are made part of LCD display, which allows the surface of the table to sense, or “see,” what is on top of it without using a camera.
This is a new technology that enables multiple users to interact simultaneously wid a touchscreen(known as SURFACE). PixelSense is d heart of this technology.
PixelSense allows a display to recognize fingers, hands, and objects placed on the screen, enabling vision-based interaction without the use of cameras. The individual pixels in the display see what's touching the screen and that information is immediately processed and interpreted.
Think of it like the connection between the eye and the brain. You need both, working together, to see. In this case, the eye is the sensor in the panel, it picks up the image and it feeds that to the brain which is our vision input processor that recognizes the image and does something with it. Taken in whole…this is PixelSense technology.
A step-by-step look at how PixelSense works:
- A contact (finger/blob/tag/object) is placed on the display
- IR back light unit provides light (though the optical sheets, LCD and protection glass) that hits the contact.
- Light reflected back from the contact is seen by the integrated sensors
- Sensors convert the light signal into an electrical signal/value
- Values reported from all of the sensors are used to create a picture of what is on the display
- The picture is analyzed using image processing techniques
- The output is sent to the PC. It includes the corrected sensor image and various contact types
