"We expect large interactive displays to be omnipresent in the future," explains Professor Raimund Dachselt, head of the Interactive Media Lab at TU Dresden. "The MultiTaction iWall provides us a 25 megapixel display supporting the widest range of input methods and unlimited touch points. The MultiTaction technology is the only one worldwide to support this variety of interaction modalities at this size. That's why we want to be the first lab with this equipment to do groundbreaking research in this area.
"In our research, we will use the rich input of multiple users at the large wall," adds Professor Dachselt. "At the same time, we aim to transform the whole room in front of the display into one large interactive space by using various interaction modalities. Among them touch, pen, tangible objects, gaze, hand gestures and handheld devices."
TU Dresden and its Computer Science department have already started to use the wall for a range of research and student projects, studies and other purposes.
"Besides conducting basic research in human-computer interaction, we work on interactive visualisations," continues Professor Dachselt. "TU Dresden applies this research. This means, we try to find perception-oriented techniques that can effectively handle big data on a big display wall for several users to fields such as cell or systems biology, computerisation of traditional industries such as manufacturing press and publishing sector, media management and other areas. The Interactive Media Lab aims to demonstrate this technology to small and medium-sized companies with need for interactive big data visualisation."
With over 37000 students, the Technische Universität Dresden is not only the largest university in Saxony but also one of the 10 largest in Germany. As one of the top universities in the country, it was assigned the status of an "excellence university" in 2012. TU Dresden is a multi-discipline university with 14 departments organized in five schools including Medicine.
"MultiTaction technology was originally based on research made at the Aalto University / Helsinki Institute for Information Technology HIIT. As a result of this, we have always paid attention to researchers' needs. MultiTaction displays are already used by a big number of universities around the world both for research and PR for science," says Hannu Anttila, VP business development of MultiTouch.
MultiTouch is demonstrating a fully realised MultiTaction iWall at ISE 2014 and Digital Signage Expo 2014.
(Jim Evans)
