NEW TECHNOLOGICAL INNOVATIONS:
A Kitchen Countertop with a Brain. A depth-sensing camera and palm-top projector turn an ordinary work surface into an interactive one.
When Ryder Ziola places a bell pepper on the kitchen work surface in front of him, the tabletop springs to life, suggesting recipes and other information. He can also use the work surface like a touch screen, selecting options with a finger--to see, for example, what ingredients might go well with his pepper. Ziola, a graduate student at the University of Washington, developed the system, dubbed Oasis, with researchers at Intel Labs Seattle led by senior scientist Beverly Harrison. Ziola is demonstrating Oasis at the ninth annual Intel Research Day, held at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, CA.
"If you put, for example, a steak on the surface, it will recognize the steak and come up with recipe," says Ziola. "It may also come up with nutritional information." The camera can also track the motion of a person's hand, and discern when he is touching the surface or not, allowing the surface to be interactive.
A touch with a finger can bring up a timer, or summon up images or video to offer guidance on a particular step in the recipe. When two ingredients are placed on the surface together, Oasis suggests recipes that combine them. Any of the information displayed on the surface can be dismissed by sweeping a hand across the projected images.
Oasis uses a palm-sized "pico-projector" made by Microvision to project images onto the surface. The positioning and recognition of objects is worked out using a depth-perceiving camera made by PrimeSense, the company that supplies sensors to Microsoft's Kinect Xbox gestural controller. Although the camera can be used to recognize objects using their 3-D shape, recognition currently involves only color information. "Being able to sense depth can make recognition easier and more robust," says Ziola, who adds that this feature will eventually be added to the system.