LabVIEW For Multi-Touch Applications?

[Evan R.]

All,

I'm curious if anyone has seen / created LabVIEW applications for Multitouch? This hot new area of HCI is gaining more and more traction in both academia and industry. I wonder what your thoughts are on LabVIEW as a platform for developing MT applications.

I know Windows 7 has a built-in API for MT, which leads me to think of the event structure...

At any rate I'm looking to start a discussion on this topic, so please reply if you have any thoughts.

-Evan R.

[SimonH]

An interesting thought Evan.  My immediate reaction would be that multi touch would be great for interacting with graph/picture control data but probably more of an annoyance for front panel controls.  I haven't played around with Windows 7 multi-touch much (aside from zooming in and rotating photographs) but it will be interesting to learn what kind of API is exposed and how easy it will be to take advantage of it with LabVIEW.

Most of the reviews I have read about the beta multi-touch drivers in Windows 7 have been pretty similar in describing the technology as "gimicky".  I'm guessing this is probably because the drivers themselves are still in beta and the apps to take advantage of the technology just aren't there yet.

For those who haven't seen multi-touch in action here is a Windows 7 beta multi-touch review on Engadget (with video)

~Simon

[Evan R.]

Hey Simon,

I have heard similar reports - "gimicky". I think this is more of a comment on the range of applications available for Multitouch. As it stands, the technology is still relatively new. Most of the applications I've seen involve sorting photos or spinning / zooming things on the screen. I'm not sure we really know yet what these technologies enable...

I have a specific interest in exploiting MT technologies to record user interaction with Virtual Instruments. From this I think we can get a better understanding of exactly how people interact with traditional benchtop equipment.

I am thinking about the Dell XT2 or XT2 capacitive MT tablet PC running Windows 7 Beta. Has anyone run LabVIEW in Windows 7 yet? While I am 100% sure it's not yet supported, will the LabVIEW even run?

Cheers,

Evan

[DMC]

Hi Evan,

Our research group has written an entire Optical Tweezers interface with LabView.  You can find brief details of the functions we made here:

http://www.opticsinfobase.org/abstract.cfm?URI=oe-17-5-3595

We're also writing a general library for interfacing to LabView that we hope to release in a few months time.

David Carberry

[r_exler]

Hi David,

how is the progress for the Multitouch library? I have a project where it would be great to have Multitouch to zoom and pan an picture control.

Roland Exler

[coodtec]

This requirement started fours years ago.

I could not belive that multitouch library did not include in the Labview.

John