Two days ago I was telling you about the exclusive license announced by Circle Twelve for the DiamondTouch Table, but I gave you just brief information published in a press release. Some of you didn’t understand why I wrote about this multi-user multi-touch table describing it as the world’s first of its type, when Microsoft Surface is more famous and everybody knows it was invented before the DiamondTouch. Well, now I want to make a parallel between the two high-end tables and point out their functionalities, as well as the differences between them, but first I want to tell you more about their history.




Break! See why DiamondTouch is cool:



History

The DiamondTouch table was created in 2001 at Mitsubishi Electric Research Laboratories as an experimental multi user system, and became available on the market in 2006.

When Microsoft unveiled the Surface:



On the other side, Microsoft got the idea in the same year, 2001, when Stevie Bathiche from Microsoft Hardware and Andy Wilson from Microsoft Research started the collaboration for creating an interactive table, the Surface, capable to understand the manipulation of physical objects, with an intuitive interface but practical for any use. In 2003 Bill Gates saw the project, liked it and the prototype based on an IKEA table got a name: T1. It featured a hole cut in the top and a sheet of architect vellum used as a diffuser, while it was equipped with pinball, a photo browser and a video puzzle. The Surface could recognize the objects placed on it as well as transfer digital content. In the next years, there were over 85 prototypes built for researchers and developers, and the table got five cameras for natural movements and gesture detection, replacing the single camera in the vision system, which proved to be unreliable since the beginning.

In 2006, Microsoft’s Surface became a product and was ready for the market in May 2007, designed as a table with a 30-inch display featuring a translucent surface capable to respond to touch, natural hand gestures and physical objects. Its applicability would be in different environments from schools and homes to the business sector.

More from Surface:



Now let’s see each product’s base specifications!

DiamondTouch multi user system measures 76 x 60 x 6 cm or 99 x 77 x 6 cm at 8 Kg and 13 Kg respectively, while the active display area measures 64 x 48 cm and 86 x 65 cm respectively, having interpolated touch resolutions of 2032 x 1520 pixels and 2736 x 2048 pixels, with 40Hz and 30Hz refresh rates.
It supports up to 4 users simultaneously and uses USB computer interface and power source, featuring RCA plug type for user pads connectivity, and 1/100 to 3/100 of ANSI user current.
The developer kit includes the multi-user hardware, 4 receiver pads with 10-foot RCA cable, 16-foot USB cable, device driver software, mouse emulation software, the software developer’s kit, and demonstration applications.

Microsoft Surface, also known as Milan, has a 30-inch display framed in clear acrylic, and the entire product measures 22 x 21 x 42 cm. The inside is made of powder-acrylic steel.
Surface is a computer system running on Windows Vista and features connectivity options for Ethernet, WI-FI, and Bluetooth 2.0. It runs on an Intel Core Quad Xeon WoodCrest processor clocked at 2.66GHz and has 4GB DDR2-1066 RAM memory with 1TB 7200 rpm hard drive capacity.




Functionalities
But what are these tables capable of?
First let’s take a look at the DiamondTouch multi user system! This table supports multiple simultaneous users and can distinguish who is who. It supports also rich gesture inputs, coffee cups, spills and other objects, as well as controlling any Windows software via the mouse emulator. Options include the Mitsubishi Electric DLP projector with mount and stand, a set of 4 receiver chairs, and technical support.
On the DiamondTouch Table small groups of users can collaborate and work with GIS image analysis, design layout, gaming, and project management, using their both hands at the same time.

Microsoft Surface allows users to grab digital information, supporting up to 52 fingers simultaneously, and displays digital reactions after placing tagged objects on it, such as transfer of digital content. It is a useful and fun interactive table for restaurants, hotels, retail establishments and public entertainment venues, and is also commercially available.

As a parenthesis, the multi-touch technology enabled in both tables was not introduced by Microsoft or Circle Twelve. It removes the need for a mouse and keyboard, providing a touch-sensitive screen with software designed to recognize multiple simultaneous touch points, unlike touchscreens that distinguish one touch at a time. This human-computer interaction technology works with the use of several factors of influence including heat, finger pressure, infrared light, high capture rate cameras, optic capture and even shadow capture.

Maybe you didn’t know, but this technology was invented in 1982 at the University of Toronto and started as a finger pressure multi-touch screen, which became capable to manipulate images later in 1984, same year when Microsoft became interested in the field.
In 1991, a paper written by Pierre Wellner described a multi-touch Digital Desk with support for multi-finger and pinching motions, technology that was adopted later by Apple for its popular iPhone.




Getting back to the Surface, we have to add that it allows you to browse through music files, create a playlist by dragging and dropping your favorite songs, send postcards with pictures instantly with a finger tap, and all these while you’re sitting in a restaurant, waiting for your meal. When you place the glass of wine on the Surface it displays information about that type of wine including pictures and food suggestions.
The first large companies that are benefiting from the Microsoft technology include: Harrah’s Entertainment, Starwood Hotels & Resorts Worldwide, and T-Mobile USA.

Harrah’s Entertainment has the Caesar Palace and the Rio All-Suite Hotel & Casino, where people can use the high-end table to reserve tickets to concerts, check menus, watch images of popular nightclubs, book spa treatments, or plan itineraries for the next day.
At Sheraton Hotels & Resorts, guests can browse and listen to the music, send pictures home, download books, and order foods and drinks.

T-Mobile USA is placing the Microsoft Surface in retail stores so that customers can compare product features, prices and phone plans. Also, it can recognize their cell phone models and display information about them in parallel so the customers to be able to compare 2 cell phones at the same time, as well as view interactive maps. In the near future they will be able to drag and drop ringtones, pictures and videos, directly into the cell phone.

While Microsoft Surface uses projection and cameras, DiamondTouch front-projected table uses an array of antennas embedded in the touch-sensitive surface, and each of these transmits a unique signal when a user touches the surface. The receiver is located in the user’s chair and the signal is transmitted via the user’s body, as he/she is connected capacitively to this receiver. Because of this smart technique, DiamondTouch can distinguish between simultaneous inputs from multiple users, each user touching it with more fingers at the same time.

Microsoft Surface supports multiple users that take turn, but it can’t support multiple inputs from multiple users at the same time, and this is what makes DiamondTable the world’s first and only multi-user touch table.

Here is a nice and clear example which Adam Bogue, the President of Circle Twelve, gave to us:
“DiamondTouch allows multiple people to interact at the same time, and it knows who is who. For example, we could have a painting application where you and I could choose different colors from a pallet and paint at the same time, and it would know who wants to be painting with the thin blue line and who wants the thick yellow line. Painting is a simple example, but we think that "multi-user" is a key distinguishing feature that will enable what we call shared display groupware and support small group collaboration.”

Other Similar Products

Everything should be clear now but the story doesn’t end with Microsoft Surface and DiamondTouch Table. During the last years, there were several other companies that have created competitive products like the CUBIT, an interactive surface supporting multi-touch input, designed by Stefan Hechenberger and Addie Wagenknecht for NOR_/D. It perceives user’s fingers as points of location, areas of contact, and vectors, while generating graphical widgets.



Another product is reactable, developed by Sergi Jordà, Martin Kaltenbrunner, Günter Geiger and Marcos Alonso, and represents a collaborative electronic music instrument with a tabletop tangible multi-touch interface, on which multiple performers can share control over the instrument just by moving and rotating the objects. The surface is luminous and can create dynamic sonic topologies with generators, filters and modulators.
The hardware consists of a translucent multi-touch surface with a camera underneath which analyzes and tracks the player’s fingertips, along with the nature, position and orientation of objects. The visual feedback is produced by a projector located underneath the surface.



EON TouchLight is another interesting multi-touch surface, this time in the form of a 3D wall screen, developed by Andrew D. Wilson from Microsoft Research, and licensed to Eon Reality. It is an expensive high-end system priced at $60,000, but capable to record and project simultaneously. It can be used by 2 people owning this device, who want to communicate with each other from anywhere in the world. TouchLight captures high-definition images of all the things placed in front of it and displays it in 2D. In addition, you could use the surface to manipulate the image in size, orientation and position, using just your hands. The built-in microphone detects vibrations and the system responds to your tapped commands.



Talking about the price, both Microsoft Surface and DiamondTable are available at around $10,000 for single units, but the price varies depending on the final configurations.