At last month’s Computer-Human Interaction (CHI) Conference, Microsoft researchers presented a system called Ensemble, a software for touch-screen surfaces that enables the added functionality of physical controls. This software also allows the user to define the functionality of each button on the physical controller.
While proving beneficial for team collaborative efforts, large touch-screen tables have been lacking in precision control due to limited resolutions. This software lets users switch to a physical controller when precision tuning is required and not able to be simulated on a touch surface.
This six foot long, four foot wide touch table is controlled by cameras below the tabletop that sense a user’s touch, with several portable sound-editing devices which all connect to the computer that controls the surface.
With a series of buttons, knobs and sliders, Ensemble allows connected hardware to perform more than a single specified task. Essentially the software is controlling the hardware utilizing the cameras within the touch-table, which detect a special tag on the bottom of each audio control box to recognize each box and determine its position on the surface. The software then produces an "aura" around each device, including touch-surface controls like play, pause, and stop, and virtual sliders that correspond to physical knobs on the box. Users are able to use both touch-screen and physical controls. The knobs perform the same function but allow for precision control, as well as user controlled, changeable functionality. Additionally, users have the ability to save their selected functions onto the controller for later use or sharing with other users.
Although Ensemble was designed for sound editing, its underlying technology makes further strides towards merging virtual and real controls. Ensemble opens the door for countless other applications of this technology in benefiting collaborative efforts without sacrificing precision.
