Have you ever yearned for more immediate control over your surroundings? No, we dont mean Magneto car-flipping abilities. We mean more like wrangling all of the gear in a room into some kind of understandable and connected system. If you said yes -- and youre a Sims aficionado -- youll want to check into CRISTAL. Were not talking expensive champagne here, were talking about the "Control of Remotely Interfaced Systems using Touch-based Actions in Living spaces" system (cmon, it sort of makes sense). The premise is simple: instead of having to juggle multiple remotes and input systems to deal with a room full of technology, CRISTAL merges a Surface-like touch area (your coffee table in this scenario), an overhead camera, and connected devices to form a frighteningly intuitive control scheme. The idea allows for all sorts of handy arrangements, like being able to virtually drag media from a server on one side of the room to your TV on the other, dim lights in a particular area by swiping on that location, or draw a path for a Roomba to clean using the overhead view. Right now this is just a research project, of course, but the team working on the concept believes costs could move down from the astronomic $10,000-$15,000 the setup would cost now to a more affordable range. Until that happens, youll have the video of CRISTAL in action after the break.Sunday, August 16, 2009
CRISTAL combines The Sims and Surface for full room control
Have you ever yearned for more immediate control over your surroundings? No, we dont mean Magneto car-flipping abilities. We mean more like wrangling all of the gear in a room into some kind of understandable and connected system. If you said yes -- and youre a Sims aficionado -- youll want to check into CRISTAL. Were not talking expensive champagne here, were talking about the "Control of Remotely Interfaced Systems using Touch-based Actions in Living spaces" system (cmon, it sort of makes sense). The premise is simple: instead of having to juggle multiple remotes and input systems to deal with a room full of technology, CRISTAL merges a Surface-like touch area (your coffee table in this scenario), an overhead camera, and connected devices to form a frighteningly intuitive control scheme. The idea allows for all sorts of handy arrangements, like being able to virtually drag media from a server on one side of the room to your TV on the other, dim lights in a particular area by swiping on that location, or draw a path for a Roomba to clean using the overhead view. Right now this is just a research project, of course, but the team working on the concept believes costs could move down from the astronomic $10,000-$15,000 the setup would cost now to a more affordable range. Until that happens, youll have the video of CRISTAL in action after the break.