Ubi Interactive uses Kinect to turn any surface into a touchscreen

In the years since the first iPhone launched, the world has gone touchscreen crazy. It seems like everything has a touchscreen today and a company called Ubi Interactive be showing off the new system that will turn any wall into a touchscreen. The company's technology uses Microsoft Kinect as a key component.

Ubi Interactive is a startup based in Munich, Germany and the company's system will turn any surface, including walls into a touchscreen. I can see turning a large wall into a touchscreen being very important in education or when delivering a presentation in the business world. The Microsoft Kinect sensor is used with a regular projector to become a multitouch PC projection system.

The system works in much the same way is an interactive whiteboard or a giant tablet screen. As you can see in the video here, the system supports gestures for zooming in and out and more. The video shows a normal projector throwing an image on a pane of frosted glass suspended in the middle of a dimly lit room. The Microsoft Kinect sensor is placed on the other side of the glass to capture the hand movements of the user and send the movement data to Ubi's special software running on a Windows PC. That same computer is running the projector as well. The system also works for gaming with touch games such as Angry Birds.

[via Wired]