Microsoft Research Shows Off Augmented Drawing, Natural UIs And More At TechFest 2011

Microsoft Research (MR) is set to show off some interesting new tech at TechFest 2011. Among the things that will be seen at the show are smart pens, augmented drawing and natural user interfaces. MR is also showing off an interesting pen that makes for computer aided freehand drawing along with some other stuff.

MR is showing off its InnerEye system that reads medical images and can interpret them in 3D. The cool part about this is that it can be used in conjunction with the highly hackable Kinect to allow the doc to control the images of an organ with gestures in 3D and that is really cool. MR is also showing something called ShadowDraw that lets the artist start to draw freehand and then the computer recognizes the shape and adds shadows automatically.

The shadows it adds are supposed to help guide the person drawing. The system is based on artist talent though so it would be fail for me. One of the cooler projects has no fancy name. It is a stylus that has sensors that recognize different grips and the different grips let the stylus act as a different implement. One grip could be a pen, another a pencil, and another a marker for instance.

[via Gottabemobile]