New interfaces challenge touch

"This is as a matter of fact the same innovation used in many cell phones or other devices, nevertheless it runs at a higher frequency so you don't feel the vibration itself," said Vincent Levesque, who is a post-doctoral fellow. "It pushes your finger away from the piece of glass, a bit like an air hockey table."

The CHI conference

At the CHI conference, university students and technology groups dreamt up most of the projects on display and shared them with potential employers who could license the research and invest in developing it.

If ZeroTouch becomes the new innovation to create 3D objects, the Snowglobe project could provide a way to view and interact with them.

Project that let users control a music player

After showing a project that let users control a music player by moving their eyes, Japanese mobile phone operator NTT DoCoMo said there were no plans to add it to any products. Shown at Ceatec 2009 nearly Tokyo and again at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona in 2010, it was a crowd pleaser, nevertheless in an August 2011 email NTT DoCoMo spokesman Yoshifumi Kuroda said: "The technology is ongoing, yet there are currently no plans to use this innovation in any products."

Germany's Hasso Plattner Institute took a different approach to gesture interaction. Led by Patrick Baudisch, the Berlin-based group has developed what it calls imaginary interfaces that allow users to interact with mobile devices when they're not in front of them. Imagine hearing your phone ring in your pocket, however instead of taking it out, you hold up your palm and swipe your finger across it to ignore the call.

Baudisch credited Apple with replacing styluses with touchscreens, nevertheless he and his team wanted to take it one step furthermore.

"Why don't we leave this [stylus] out and retrieve no devices at all for these tiny interactions just as turning off an alarm or picking up a phone call or sending to voicebox," he said while CHI 2011. "People will interact directly on the palm of their hand."

The short term

In the short term, Dulaney said, improving the accuracy of the interfaces and reducing fingerprints will be on the minds of developers. Nevertheless, he imagines that transparent displays might become popular hereafter. Users could simply hold their phones up and content could be overlaid, similar to how today's augmented reality applications use a phone's camera, he said.

At Ceatec 2010 in Japan, TDK showed off transparent screens and according to a May 2011 press release, the company has begun mass production of them. Called electroluminescent displays by TDK, the screens have a resolution of 320-by-240 pixels and are "mainly intended for use as the main display panel in mobile phones and other mobile devices."

The research in rehabilitation

Plans to use the research in rehabilitation and therapy are already pursuant to this agreement way, according to Andrzej Cichocki, head of the Laboratory for Advanced Brain Signal Processing at Riken.

Based on the same principles, one company showed off a BMI that let users type by just concentrating on letters they want to use. Shown at Cebit 2011, Guger Technologies presented intendiX, a system that consists of a skullcap with electrodes, a pocket-sized brainwave amplifier and a Windows application that analyzes and decodes the brain waves.

He said there's a benefit to when large companies commercialize new interface innovation. "This proves that people are thinking the same way," he said. "People will become much more comfortable with the new research."

Large corporation to commercialize a new innovation

While it might take a large corporation to commercialize a new innovation, mainstream adoption will ultimately rely on whether consumers can become comfortable with it.

Nick Barber covers general innovation news in both text and video for IDG News Service. E-mail him at Nick_Barber@idg.com and follow him on Twitter at @nickjb.