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 Couple that with a different kind of wave - light, in the form of
lasers - and we're edging towards a world of 3D, holographic
displays hovering in the air that we can touch, feel and control.
UK start-up Ultrahaptics, for example, is working with premium car
maker Jaguar Land Rover [TAMOJL.UL] to create invisible air-based
controls that drivers can feel and tweak. Instead of fumbling for
the dashboard radio volume or temperature slider, and taking your
eyes off the road, ultrasound waves would form the controls around
your hand.
"You don't have to actually make it all the way to a surface, the
controls find you in the middle of the air and let you operate
them," says Tom Carter, co-founder and chief technology officer of
Ultrahaptics.
Such technologies, proponents argue, are an advance on devices we
can control via gesture - like Nintendo's Wii or Leap Motion's
sensor device that allows users to control computers with hand
gestures. That's because they mimic the tactile feel of real objects
by firing pulses of inaudible sound to a spot in mid air.
 They also move beyond the latest generation of tactile mobile
interfaces, where companies such as Apple and Huawei [HWT.UL] are
building more response into the cold glass of a mobile device
screen.
Ultrasound promises to move interaction from the flat and physical
to the three dimensional and air-bound. And that's just for
starters.
By applying similar theories about waves to light, some companies
hope to not only reproduce the feel of a mid-air interface, but to
make it visible, too.
Japanese start-up Pixie Dust Technologies, for example, wants to
match mid-air haptics with tiny lasers that create visible holograms
of those controls. This would allow users to interact, say, with
large sets of data in a 3D aerial interface.
"It would be like the movie 'Iron Man'," says Takayuki Hoshi, a
co-founder, referencing a sequence in the film where the lead
character played by Robert Downey Jr. projects holographic images
and data in mid-air from his computer, which he is then able to
manipulate by hand.
BROKEN PROMISES
Japan has long been at the forefront of this technology. Hiroyuki
Shinoda, considered the father of mid-air haptics, said he first had
the idea of an ultrasound tactile display in the 1990s and filed his
first patent in 2001.
His team at the University of Tokyo is using ultrasound technology
to allow people to remotely see, touch and interact with things or
each other. For now, the distance between the two is limited by the
use of mirrors, but one of its inventors, Keisuke Hasegawa, says
this could eventually be converted to a signal, making it possible
to interact whatever the distance.
 For sure, promises of sci-fi interfaces have been broken before. And
even the more modest parts of this technology are some way off. Lee
Skrypchuk, Jaguar Land Rovers' Human Machine Interface Technical
Specialist, said technology like Ultrahaptics' was still 5-7 years
away from being in their cars.
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And Hoshi, whose Pixie Dust has made promotional videos of people
touching tiny mid-air sylphs, says the cost of components needs to
fall further to make this technology commercially viable. "Our task
for now is to tell the world about this technology," he says.
Pixie Dust is in the meantime also using ultrasound to form
particles into mid-air shapes, so-called acoustic levitation, and
speakers that direct sound to some people in a space and not others
- useful in museums or at road crossings, says Hoshi.
FROM KITCHEN TO CAR
But the holy grail remains a mid-air interface that combines touch
and visuals.
Hoshi says touching his laser plasma sylphs feels like a tiny
explosion on the fingertips, and would best be replaced by a more
natural ultrasound technology.
And even laser technology itself is a work in progress.
Another Japanese company, Burton Inc, offers live outdoor
demonstrations of mid-air laser displays fluttering like fireflies.
But founder Hidei Kimura says he's still trying to interest local
governments in using it to project signs that float in the sky
alongside the country's usual loudspeaker alerts during a natural
disaster.
Perhaps the biggest obstacle to commercializing mid-air interfaces
is making a pitch that appeals not just to consumers' fantasies but
to the customer's bottom line.
Norwegian start-up Elliptic Labs, for example, says the world's
biggest smartphone and appliance manufacturers are interested in its
mid-air gesture interface because it requires no special chip and
removes the need for a phone's optical sensor.
Elliptic CEO Laila Danielsen says her ultrasound technology uses
existing microphones and speakers, allowing users to take a selfie,
say, by waving at the screen.
Gesture interfaces, she concedes, are nothing new. Samsung
Electronics had infra-red gesture sensors in its phones, but says
"people didn't use it".
Danielsen says her technology is better because it's cheaper and
broadens the field in which users can control their devices. Next
stop, she says, is including touchless gestures into the kitchen, or
cars.
(Reporting by Jeremy Wagstaff; Editing by Ian Geoghegan)
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