Sunday, October 12, 2008

New Microsoft Touchless Demo: Multi-touch without Touch

Well, Microsoft has just release their new Touchless SDK which enables the user to give input using gesture, without touch :) This is possible via the use of color tracking with web camera.


The Touchless SDK is an open source SDK for .NET applications. It enables developers to create multi-touch based applications using a webcam for input. Color based markers defined by the user are tracked and their information is published through events to clients of the SDK. In a nutshell, the Touchless SDK enables touch without touching.


However, I found that running the demo isn't quite straight forward. Here is what you need to do.

  1. Set up your web camera by selecting the camera you want to use in "Camera" page.

  2. Set up the markers. You need to use "Markers" which should be objects with bright colors such as tennis ball, a plastic toy. You need to get the web camera to see your marker and click "Add A New Marker" button. The image will be freeze and you need to mark area of your marker by click on the image and drag a circle around your marker. After that, the demo will be able to track your marker like this.


  3. Now, enjoy the demo! :)

For those who still cannot run the demo now, you can watch the video of demo program running here.



Related Page: