Future Interfaces: Where We Go From Here

Posted 03/19/2010 at 4:06am | by Alan Fackler and Alex Castle

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How did you interact with your gadgets 5 years ago? Chances are, with a Mouse and keyboard. Maybe some buttons, or a trackpad here and there. But how about today? Probably with a mouse and keyboard, still, but we'll bet that's not all. Does your phone have a touchscreen? Likely. Can it do voice recognition, too? Bet it can. Do you have a Wii or a PS3? Then you’d better add motion control to the list.

Our point is that the way we interface with our gadgets has changed tremendously over the last couple years, and it’s only going to get crazier from here. To help you prepare, we’ve put together a list of 10 of the future interface technologies we’re most excited about. Read on to find out which ones made the list!

Neural Interfaces  

Neural based interfaces can be seen in any Sci-Fi movie over the past five decades, but many companies have actually made real head-way in developing a cohesive bond between our human and electronic brains.  On the forefront is the Intendix Brain-Computer Interface.  Developed primarily to help patients suffering from crippling disabilities, this neural computer is a tremendous step in strengthening the technological bond between man and machine.  By wearing a EEG (Electroencephalography) cap, your mind can interface with the computer and create text (at world record speeds by the way) merely by spelling them in your head.  After words are thought out, you can command the computer to speak the written text back, print it, or e-mail the message out.  All of these commands are done merely by thinking them, as the EEG cap allows the computer to analyze shifting brain waves and EEG patterns.

Tech demos have demonstrated the tremendous spelling capabilities of the device, and have also taken things a step further, including a real- time demo where a user is able to navigate through a 3D environment using only thoughts.  Intendix claims that it’ll take the average person between 10-15 minutes to become accustomed to the interface; a relatively short period of time given the complex nature of the tech.  $12,250 will get you this mental mash-up, after Intendix confirms a release date later in the year. 

Augmented Reality

If you’ve somehow managed to avoid the AR hype thus far, augmented reality is, in a nutshell, visual data overlayed on the real world. In concepts and in sci-fi, this frequently takes the form of a pair of glasses or even contacts that allow you to see hologram-like data in the real world. In practice, augmented reality has been available using smartphones equipped with video cameras, compasses and gyroscopes. This means that unlike a lot of the entries in this article, augmented reality is something you can try out right now. Provided, that is, that you’ve got a iPhone or an Android smartphone.

The most ambitious  augmented reality application currently available to consumers is Layar, an AR browser for Android and the iPhone. Performance is still a bit on the sketchy side, but it does a passible job of adding various “layers” (fast food, houses for sale, tweets, etc.) to the real world as viewed through your phone camera.

Virtual Reality

Alright, we know what you’re thinking: Isn’t this “Interfaces of the future,” and not “Interfaces of 1992?” Believe it or not, some people are still waving the VR flag. Chief among them is Virtusphere, which Maximum PC recently saw demoed at GDC 2010. The Virtusphere is essentially a giant hamster ball; a 10-foot tall hollow sphere that you run around inside. It’s propped up on rollers which—like a trackball—feed rotational information back to the computer. Combined with a traditional VR headset and a motion-sensing gun peripheral, the Virtusphere lets you actually run around in a virtual environment.

We’ve still got our doubts about whether or not the Virtusphere is the future of virtual reality. First and foremost, it turns out that a 10-foot-tall hollow sphere has a not-inconsiderable amount of inertia, meaning that if you’re running in one direction and decide to quickly change and run in another direction, the sphere’s going to keep spinning in the first direction.