At the ESRIUC this year there was a special group of presentations put together in a Geodesign summit. Obviously a didscipline of interest to Wacom (www.wacom.com) , the company hosted a lunch hour presentation to show off their future offering for the geodesign professional (device is so early in development it has no name at this time).
We got a first look at the new hardware (touch tablet) and were shown how simple it was for the user to pan around the screen with one finger touch. A simply pinch action was all it took the user to rotate, pan, and zoom about the display. What was very interesting about the unit was it’s ability to learn and detect patterns in your fingers and finger movement, for example, this could enable geoprocessing tasks to be performed based on the specific touch style you use or perhaps. Imagine using a swipe motion to undo, or perform a specific process based on a 2 finger touch.
An ideal potential use of such a device could be for public participation, utilizing both pen and touch. This would be different that your typical touch device whereas this has precision of the pen along with the navigation facilitated by touch gestures offering intuiive access to 3D design tools – This is indeed intuitive touch technology!
The prototype device coming some time down the road, perhaps being shown at the 2011 geodesign summit in January. Note: The second GeoDesign Summit will be held on January 5-7, 2011, in Redlands, California. http://www.geodesignsummit.com/
Wacom prototype tablet, ideal for GeoDesign
Originally uploaded by GISuser.com GIS and Social, Mobile Tech Images