OREANDA-NEWS. Fujitsu Laboratories Limited announced the development of next-generation user interface technology that enables intuitive, fingertip operations. This new technology can accurately detect where the user's finger is and what it is touching, and uses off-the-shelf cameras and projectors. This eliminates the need for expensive equipment and overcomes imprecise tracking—issues posed by conventional technologies.

The new technology uses the cameras together with a projector to enable a user to trace a finger across a document on a table, copy it as digital data, and display it. This simple interaction with objects makes the technology an interface between people and ICT services, thereby expanding the ways in which ICT is employed.

In recent years, considerable work has been completed in developing intuitive user interfaces with the aim of improving the usability of PCs and smartphones. Commercial applications have been developed for hand gesture-based screen control technologies and speech interaction technologies, and new user interfaces have begun to be employed as replacements for the mouse, keyboard and touchscreen. At the same time, to test the viability of enhanced user interfaces, actually touching and moving objects has been suggested as a potential area of development. Until now, however, this approach has required special sensors to be embedded into objects, which has served as a major roadblock in making the technology practical.