Projection Keyboard Now Ready for Deployment

Canesta has launched a fully-Integrated projection keyboard for mobile and wireless devices. By integrating a set of tiny Canesta components into such mobile products as smartphones, or cell phones manufacturers will be able to offer their customers a full-sized keyboard and mouse created "out of thin air" by projected beams of light. This eliminates the need for awkward input methodologies such as styluses or thumb keypads. Canesta's revolutionary "electronic perception technology" is then used to track user's finger movements in three dimensions as the user types on the image of a keyboard, projected on any flat surface in front of the mobile device. No accessories are required.

"Mobile and wireless devices have untethered business professionals from their offices, yet so much about mobile technology remains the legacy of desktop computing," said Chris Shipley, executive producer of DEMOmobile. "For example, for real data input, such substantive correspondence, the use of analytical tools, or tasks requiring a high degree of interactivity, nothing has surpassed a traditional, full sized keyboard. With important, new wireless applications emerging, a projection keyboard and mouse, fully Integrated into a pocket-sized mobile device, means that mobile professionals will finally be able to use these devices as easily as they would a desktop computer, and perhaps leave their laptops at home."

The Integrated Canesta Keyboard is made possible by the Canesta Keyboard Perception Chipset, the first commercial realization of Canesta's electronic perception technology. Electronic perception technology is a low cost and practical technology that permits machines and electronic devices of any nature to "see" by tracking nearby objects in three dimensions in real time. The chipset itself, which consists of an invisible light source, a pattern projector for the keyboard, and a unique sensor chip, is designed to unobtrusively be Integrated right into the cases of small mobile devices. The low cost semiconductor manufacturing techniques used for the chipset and its small form factor mean that OEMs may add this capability to today's wireless devices for little or no size penalty at a reasonable cost.

Wireless and mobility comentator, Andrew M. Seybold sees an impact that goes far beyond OEMs. "The ability to finally do PC-like work on a mobile device will undoubtedly have a positive impact on the wireless market," said Seybold. "We would expect in the long term to see not only an across-the-board increase in revenue traffic, but the appearance of new, value-added carrier offerings that take advantage of the capabilities of a full-sized keyboard on a mobile device."

The Integrated Canesta Keyboard is implemented by means of a new type of 3-dimensional sensor technology that can track moving objects in the vicinity of the sensor chip in real time. The packaged sensor, a module not much larger than a pea, resolves a user's finger movements as he or she types on the projected image of a keyboard, resolves those movements into "keystrokes" on specific projected keys, and processes the movements into a stream of serial keystroke data similar to that output by a physical keyboard. This enables an OEM wishing to integrate the sensor module into a mobile or wireless device to do so with great ease, as both the software and hardware interfaces to conventional keyboards are well understood, and well represented with existing code and circuit designs.

An OEM Development Toolkit, consisting of an application test bed with a pattern projector and image sensor, customization tools, sample applications, device drivers, and management and interface software is now being made available by the company to OEM's who want to embed the "keyboard" into their products.'"

Posted to the site on 23rd September 2002