This exciting new technology allows you to change the shape of the display with your own hands and aims to revolutionize the way you interact with your laptops, smartphones and other devices with displays. The GHOST stands for “Generic, Highly-Organic Share-Changing Interfaces”. If this becomes successful, imagine
touching the images on your screen and pulling out objects and data to play with them.
Our current displays are flat (or somewhat curved without any purpose) and the GHOST Project wants to change that. This project was launched in January 2013 and is supported by EU.
The GHOST coordinator Professor Kasper Hornbæk, University of Copenhagen, talks about the future applications varying from everyday interaction with smartphones to learning with computers and designing. He adds that it isn’t just confined to deformation of the screen-shape, instead it wants you to give chance to interact with an object and change its shape mid-air.
This technology could also be coupled with the ultrasound levitation to project the display out of the flat screen. Now a surgeon will have the freedom to work with a virtual brain before operating a real-life brain. Think about the artists and designers who can remold their virtual clay and store it back in their computers. Let’s not forget the musicians- the GHOST Project researchers are working to create interfaces like pads and sponges to help them control speed, timbre and other parameters of EDM.
The good news is that GHOST has already a prototype called “Emerge” that actually works and you can pull out data from bar graphs off the computer screen, as shown above in picture.
The University of Bristol, one of the partners in the GHOST Project has launched a startup named UltraHaptics to develop the technology to create feelings in mid-air using ultrasound.
I came across this technology today and I found it very intriguing. What are your thoughts about the GHOST Project? Share your opinions in comments below.
