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Acoustic trick gives ‘dumbphones’ touchscreen feel
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Acoustics give ‘dumbphones’ a touch of smartphone magic
And they recently received a request for help in identifying a rogue elephant in a herd in Botswana that has been trampling crops. This is likely to be tough, says Alibhai, because there are likely to be few features to look out for with an elephant print. “You can spin the thing around and you don’t know where the top and bottom are,” he says. But he is still optimistic that the new technique will help spot their elephant in the crowd. n
sspl/getty
features that can be used as identifiers: footprints are also unique, says Zoe Jewell of Belize based conservation organisation Wildtracks. While monitoring black rhino using radio collars in Zimbabwe in the 1990s, Jewell and her husband Sky Alibhai discovered that repeatedly sedating females to attach and then maintain collars reduced their fertility rates (Journal of Zoology, vol 253, p 333). So they began to investigate whether technology could emulate the way bush trackers identify animals by their prints. The footprint identification software they developed measures the distances and angles between various landmarks on the print, to create a unique biometric signature. So far it works for white and black rhino, cheetahs and
EMBARRASSED by your “ancient” push-button cellphone? Touchscreen envy eating you up inside? Fear not. New software could offer users of cheaper push-button phones access to some of the features usually found only on more pricey smartphones. Called TouchDevice, the program uses acoustics to effectively render the casing and LCD display of a standard phone sensitive to touch. And it needs no new hardware, so can be applied to most existing phones, its creators claim. The TouchDevice software, developed by Input Dynamics of Cambridge, UK, will let users scroll through menus, browse or zoom; all by swiping, tapping or scratching a fingertip along the side of the phone. It achieves this through smart use of the phone’s built-in microphone, says inventor Giovanni Bisutti. Every tap on the phone’s screen or its casing produces a telltale sound that resonates through the device. “The built-in mic picks up these ‘acoustic fingerprints’ and the TouchDevice –Check out my pink spot– software algorithms work out which spot on the phone was tapped or swiped” to within about 1 square polar bears. centimetre, says Bisutti. The software doesn’t cope too At last week’s Meerkats and well with smudged footprints, Avatars conference in Cambridge, which have to be picked out by UK, the firm demonstrated a version hand, but the pair are working able to identify single crisp taps from with software firm SAS, based in Cary, North Carolina, to solve this. a fingernail or stylus. The firm says that it is refining its algorithms to Wildtracks is working with a interpret the acoustically distinct conservation group in India to signatures made by scratching the help them track Bengal tigers.
device with a fingernail, and tapping or swiping it with a softer fingertip. In future they say that the algorithms will be able to handle taps from multiple fingertips at once, turning old phones into multi-touch devices. Bisutti says he is in talks with phone manufacturers about licensing the software. “They see the advantages. It lets them build a touchscreen phone without the
“The software uses sound to render the casing and screen of a standard phone sensitive to touch” need for expensive hardware – and the software can be uploaded into existing phone designs,” he says. Acoustic fingerprinting hit the headlines earlier this year when Chris Harrison at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, developed a human-skin-based cellphone control system called Skinput. Skinput uses compact projectors, dubbed picoprojectors, to turn skin into a “touchscreen” that, for instance, allows people to tap an icon projected on their forearm to answer a call. The tap’s acoustic signature – a resonant ricochet through the arm’s bone, muscle and fat – activates the phone’s answering mechanism. “Acoustics fingerprinting is really neat in that you can turn a totally passive item like a table, or in this case a cellphone, into an interactive surface,” says Harrison. Paul Marks n
–Screening out to be touched– 18 September 2010 | NewScientist | 21
Acoustics give ‘dumbphones’ a touch of smartphone magic
And they recently received a request for help in identifying a rogue elephant in a herd in Botswana that has been trampling crops. This is likely to be tough, says Alibhai, because there are likely to be few features to look out for with an elephant print. “You can spin the thing around and you don’t know where the top and bottom are,” he says. But he is still optimistic that the new technique will help spot their elephant in the crowd. n
sspl/getty
features that can be used as identifiers: footprints are also unique, says Zoe Jewell of Belize based conservation organisation Wildtracks. While monitoring black rhino using radio collars in Zimbabwe in the 1990s, Jewell and her husband Sky Alibhai discovered that repeatedly sedating females to attach and then maintain collars reduced their fertility rates (Journal of Zoology, vol 253, p 333). So they began to investigate whether technology could emulate the way bush trackers identify animals by their prints. The footprint identification software they developed measures the distances and angles between various landmarks on the print, to create a unique biometric signature. So far it works for white and black rhino, cheetahs and
EMBARRASSED by your “ancient” push-button cellphone? Touchscreen envy eating you up inside? Fear not. New software could offer users of cheaper push-button phones access to some of the features usually found only on more pricey smartphones. Called TouchDevice, the program uses acoustics to effectively render the casing and LCD display of a standard phone sensitive to touch. And it needs no new hardware, so can be applied to most existing phones, its creators claim. The TouchDevice software, developed by Input Dynamics of Cambridge, UK, will let users scroll through menus, browse or zoom; all by swiping, tapping or scratching a fingertip along the side of the phone. It achieves this through smart use of the phone’s built-in microphone, says inventor Giovanni Bisutti. Every tap on the phone’s screen or its casing produces a telltale sound that resonates through the device. “The built-in mic picks up these ‘acoustic fingerprints’ and the TouchDevice –Check out my pink spot– software algorithms work out which spot on the phone was tapped or swiped” to within about 1 square polar bears. centimetre, says Bisutti. The software doesn’t cope too At last week’s Meerkats and well with smudged footprints, Avatars conference in Cambridge, which have to be picked out by UK, the firm demonstrated a version hand, but the pair are working able to identify single crisp taps from with software firm SAS, based in Cary, North Carolina, to solve this. a fingernail or stylus. The firm says that it is refining its algorithms to Wildtracks is working with a interpret the acoustically distinct conservation group in India to signatures made by scratching the help them track Bengal tigers.
device with a fingernail, and tapping or swiping it with a softer fingertip. In future they say that the algorithms will be able to handle taps from multiple fingertips at once, turning old phones into multi-touch devices. Bisutti says he is in talks with phone manufacturers about licensing the software. “They see the advantages. It lets them build a touchscreen phone without the
“The software uses sound to render the casing and screen of a standard phone sensitive to touch” need for expensive hardware – and the software can be uploaded into existing phone designs,” he says. Acoustic fingerprinting hit the headlines earlier this year when Chris Harrison at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, developed a human-skin-based cellphone control system called Skinput. Skinput uses compact projectors, dubbed picoprojectors, to turn skin into a “touchscreen” that, for instance, allows people to tap an icon projected on their forearm to answer a call. The tap’s acoustic signature – a resonant ricochet through the arm’s bone, muscle and fat – activates the phone’s answering mechanism. “Acoustics fingerprinting is really neat in that you can turn a totally passive item like a table, or in this case a cellphone, into an interactive surface,” says Harrison. Paul Marks n
–Screening out to be touched– 18 September 2010 | NewScientist | 21