Malaysian company Smart Surface Sdn Bhd announced its SmartWall multi-touch surface computing platform on on 25 August.

We got glimpse of the first SmartWall under construction but still under wraps, when we dropped by its modest office in the Taipan area of USJ Subang Jaya on 13 August to see its award-winning SmartSurface multi-touch surface computing table.

SmartSurface made its debut at ITEX 2009, where it won managing director Faysal Abdulaziz and executive director Homam Alghorani the ITEX 2009 Best Inventions Winner in the Corporate category and the ITEX Gold Medal awards at the 20th International Invention, Innovation & Technology Exhibition (ITEX) at the KL Convention Centre from 15 to 17 May.

Smart Surface had about five corporate customers for SmartSurface when we visited, including a major tobacco company which  which  uses it to promote their products and services in an enjoyable and interactive ways through relavant multi-player games.

Held annually and organised by MINDS (Malaysian Invention & Design Society), ITEX is the region's leading exhibition of new inventions, new technologies and products by individuals, universities and companies from across ASEAN, the rest of Asia, Europe and elsewhere, with the aim to secure investment, manufacturing and commercialisation prospects and partners.

Another Malaysian company, Kreateevee Sdn Bhd launched its own version of a multi-touch table interactive kiosk on 29 July, also at the KL Convention Centre in conjunction with the MSC Malaysia Great ICT Sale 2009.

A long time in gestation

“Surface computing has been around as a concept since the 1980s but the unavailability of sufficient computing power was its main hindrance, whilst the the number of LCD displays available then was insufficient and very expensive,” said Faysal.

The concept basically holds that instead of humans adapting their natural ways to enter data in ways which fit in with the limited constraints of a keyboard and a mouse, with multi-touch surface computing, the computer adapts itself to the natural ways of humans, such as their gestures, hand sweeps, handling of objects and so on for its input.

For example, medical doctors can use it to explain their patient's medical contition by showing them their X'Ray and MRI scan images on SmartSurface, show them third-party results of a search engine search on their condition, type out a prescription on a virtual keyboard and post it electronically to the dispensary for the patient to collect his medicine, all with the sweep of their hands.

Doctors can also use it in online consultations with colleagues and fellow professionals elsewhere.

In education, studens can use SmartSurface to interact with their own research within simulated windows. Both SmartSurface and SmartWall can also be used in advertising and at exhibitions; in airports, malls and shops; in banking, businesses and by telcommunications operators; cafes; in teleconferencing; by the military; by manufacturers and so on.

According to Wikipedia, early work on surface computing was conducted at the University of Toronto, Alisa Research and at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

New York University professor Jeff Han demonstrated his pioneering work on surface computing at the  technology, Entertainment, Design conference in Monterey in February 2006.

Microsoft has conducted its own research into surface computing and the result was Microsoft Surface, which was used among others, by AT&T which was the first retailer in the United States to it to help their customers buy phones. Customers place the phones on the surface and it profides them with the specifications and price of that model.

Smart computing has also picked up elsewhere, with a handful of companies which have produced their own versions.

According to Wikipedia, the leading the leading players worldwide are Arcstream in the U.K. with with its range of multi-touch walls and surface, Natural User Interface Technologies (NUI Tech) in Sweden with its Horizon Table and Snowlake application, and Smart Surface in Malaysia, with its SmartWall and SmartSurface.

Not a touchscreen technology
 
Not to be confused with touchscreen technology used on PDAs and smartphones, surface computing works on the optical detection of multiple objects and their movement.

A digital light processor (DLP) projector under the table projects the image of objects, tables, documents, graphs, keyboards, web pages  and so on onto the underside of a clear had surface, which could be glass, acrylic, polycarbonate and so on.

For the tracking system, the surface is illuminated by another light source such as infra red or a laser and when a hand touches the surface that light is reflected down onto a photo-sensitive receptor such as an infra red camera or a bank of charge coupled device receptors, which feeds the position information to the computer, enabling it to know of the position of the hand and its movement.

When the user attempts to resize, rotate or drag an object, the computer will respond to the raw data input and perform the tasks according to its programmed instructions.

The techniques of illumination of the surface vary. Professor Jeff Han used a technique called Frustrated Total Internal Reflection whereby infrared light emitting diodes (LEDs) are placed around the edges of an acrylic plate and shine light into it which under normal conditions is reflected back into the acrylic by total internal refraction when it hits reaches the acrylic-air boundary and its basically trapped within the acrylic, much like the light within and optical fibre.

However, when someone places their hand on the surface, some of that infra red light is reflected downwards and escapes out of the surface onto the light detector below.

NUI Tech uses a different technique called Rear Diffused Infrared Illumination, whereby infrared light is shone on the surface from below and a diffuser is placed on top of the surface, and when an object touches it, a shadow is created at the position of the object which the camera below detects.

“Instead of infrared, we use a laser tracking system, which not only has a high degree of accuracy but is also not affected by ambient light,” said Faysal who developed the realtime computing sytem which employs advanced motion and interactivity.

At present, no operating system can understand multi-touch smart surfaces, so Smart Surface developed the middle layer, including the libraries, which provides the interface between the multi-touch application and the underlying operating system.

Depending on customer requirement and the nature of their applications, Smart Surface can provide SmartSurface and SmartWall with Windows XP, Vista or Ubuntu Linux.

“Linux is more suitable for defense applications due to its faster response time, greater customisability and greater core-level control, whilst Windows is more suitable for use in exhibition systems and Mac OS for more graphics-intensive applications,” said Faysal.

“However, within a year from now we will see notebook PCs begin to cater to multi-touch technology,” Faysal added.

For example, Windows 7 also includes multi-touch capabilities,whilst Multi-Pointer X (MPX) is a modification to the existing X.org implementation ofthe X Window System  to provide multiple mouse pointers at the windowing system level so multiple users can use it at the same time.

The X Windows System underlies graphical user interfaces (GUI) such as GNOME, KDE and Xfce used with Linux, the GUIs used in commercial UNIX flavours, Apple Mac OS X and others, and whilst Microsoft Windows does not come with support for X, there are third-party applications which let X applications run within Windows.

Smart Surface prices its SmartSurface and SmartWall solutions according to customer requirement, as they are very much made-to-order. However, a typical Smart Surface table can cost betweeen  RM30,000 and RM60,000 depending on size, application and scope.

Besides Malaysia and Asia, Smart Surface has its eyes set on the Middle East, which it expects to be its largets international market, especially since customers there have the financial resources to invest in new, innovative and technologically advanced products.

Students are welcome

“Smart Surface also welcomes students to apprentice with us to learn about multi-touch technology,” said Faysal. Interested parties can e-mail the company at This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it . This e-mail address is protected from spambots, so you'll need JavaScript enabled to view it, whilst further information is available on its wesbite, www.smart-surface.com.

“Over the next 12 months we want to make people more aware of multi-touch and for corporations to know how to use it to increase their productivity and for us to be at par with Microsoft,” Faysal added.

Faysal from Bangladesh and Homam, an electrical engineer from Syria, met whilst they were students at the Asia Pacific University College of Technology and Innovation (UCTI), formerly known as APIIT.

Smart Surface chairman is Dr. Ammar Hassan, a Syrian civil engineer resident in Japan. The company also has an office in Tokyo, Japan.