Android Tech

Voice User Interface (VUI) Since the ‘ Put That There ‘ video presentation by Chris Schmandt in 1979, voice recognition has yet to meet with a revolutionary kind of success. The most recent hype over VUI has got to be Siri , a personal assistant application which is incorporated into Apple’s iOS. It uses a natural language user interface for its voice recognition function to perform tasks exclusively on Apple devices.     However you also see it as the supporting act in other user interface technologies like Google Glass itself. Glass works basically like a smartphone, only you don’t have to hold it up and interact with it with your fingers. Instead it clings to you as eyewear and receives your commands via voice control . The only thing that is lacking now in VUI is the reliability of recognizing what you say . Perfect that and it will be incorporated into user interfaces of the future. At the rate that smartphones capabilities are expanding an...

Augmented Reality (AR) We are already experiencing AR on some of our smartphone apps like Wikitude and Drodishooting , but they are pretty much at their elementary stages of development. AR is getting the biggest boost in awareness via the upcoming Google’s Project Glass , a pair of wearable eyeglasses that allows one to see virtual extensions of reality that you can interact with. Here’s an awesome demo of what to expect.   AR can be on anything other than glasses, so long as the device is able to interact with a real-world environment in real-time. Picture a piece of see-through device which you can hold over objects, buildings and your surroundings to give you useful information. For example, when you come across a foreign signboard, you can look through the glass device to see them translated for your easy reading. AR can also make use of your natural environment to create mobile user interfaces where you can interact with by projecting displays on...

Flexible OLED display If touchscreens on smartphones are rigid and still not responsive enough to your commands, then you might probably be first in line to try out flexible OLED (organic light-emitting diode) displays. The OLED is an organic semiconductor which can still display light even when rolled or stretched. Stick it on a plastic bendable substrate and you have a brand new and less rigid smartphone screen.    Furthermore, these new screens can be twisted , bent or folded to interact with the computing system within. Bend the phone to zoom in and out, twist a corner to turn the volume up, twist the other corner to turn it down, twist both sides to scroll through photos and more. Such flexible UI enables us to naturally interact with the smartphone even when our hands are too preoccupied to use touchscreen . This could well be the answer to the sensitivity (or lack there of) of smartphone screens towards gloved fingers or when fingers are ...

Brain-Computer Interface Our brain generates all kinds of electrical signals with our thoughts, so much so that each specific thought has its own brainwave pattern. These unique electrical signals can be mapped to carry out specific commands so that thinking the thought can actually carry out the set command. In a EPOC neuroheadset created by Tan Le, the co-founder and president of Emotiv Lifescience, users have to don a futuristic headset that detects their brainwaves generated by their thoughts . As you can see from this demo video , the command executed by thought is pretty primitive (i.e. pulling the cube towards the user) and yet the detection seems to be facing some difficulties. It looks like this UI may take awhile to be adequately developed. In any case, envision a (distant) future where one could operate computer systems with thoughts alone . From the concept of a ‘smart home’ where one could turn lights on or off without having to step out of ...