Everyone knows micro projectors (pico projectors) are awesome, its quite undeniable that something that will fit in your pocket but project a 50 inch screen using just batteries and a video source is cool. But the jury is still out on multi touch environments. With recent idea’s like the 10/GUI concept of a multi-touch operating system hitting big within social media it does look promising, but for years the touch table and other multi touch/touch screen computers have been doing ok but not really flying. You can see the video on 10/GUI – the multi touch operating system below, but perhaps the touch screen needs a truly epic partner to bring itself to the limelight fully.

Enter the micro projector. Micro projector’s are great at projecting, showing us images, video’s or information on any surface, with little effort. Being a visual element the micro projector fits well within a lot of systems, replacing a computer screen in something that will fit in your pocket. But what about the combination of a touchscreen based control system with the pico projector? The slim, small, compact ease and simplicity of a pico projector with the expanding dimensions of control given by the use of multiple touch’s to a screen. Think minority report, star trek, recently james bond – and all those other sci-fi implementations of a touch screen vibrant visual environment – this really is on our doorstep, but in reality it might in fact be even better.

While this idea sounds amazing but beyond us, it in fact is already on its way to us. Funai, a technology manufacturer has produced the first ever touchscreen projector – named the Funai eco. Using a laser pico projector similar to the one we featured a few weeks ago, the funai eco uses the input from the touch screen to allow the user control over the outputted image, the name would also imply an ecology based orientation, which perhaps micro projector’s can provide over traditional lcd, however this is yet to be proved – still we hope the funai eco prototype provides us a good step forwards towards an amazing touchscreen micro projector.

A single device that uses the freedom of a micro projector, capable of running from battery or perhaps using wireless power, coupled with the ingenious new ideas of using multi-touch applications to make more efficient use of our input, effectively overcoming the current bottleneck of input bandwidth between the human brain and the fingertips. Tommorow’s world is likely to be full of micro-projecting touch-screen devices, its an exciting age and I can’t wait to get my hands on the next step forward in human-computer interaction.