'Leaning' edge software from Lean & Zoom, a CMU spinoff, creates national buzz
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Curt Stone, executive-in-residence at the Carnegie Mellon Quality of Life Technology Center, uses Lean & Zoom software, which detects when your face is getting closer to the screen and enlarges the image.
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Zoom in on a fourth-floor office in Carnegie Mellon's Newell Simon Hall. A tech entrepreneur reads a spreadsheet on his laptop. Wait. Is that number in cell E5 correct?
As he leans forward to get a closer look, the image magnifies and zooms in -- suddenly, the cell fills the screen.
Making this possible is a recently premiered technology called Lean & Zoom, a software download that uses the cameras found in most laptops to automatically magnify the screen when the user leans in for a closer look. Lean & Zoom LLC, the Carnegie Mellon spinoff company behind the technology, recently premiered the technology at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas.
New applications for the simple concept were imagined by industry reps at the convention: Had the creators considered moving the technology to mobile devices? Could it help with in-car navigation? And what about advertising displays that could follow the shopper's gaze?
PG VIDEO: New computer programZoom out for a second: The excitement that Lean & Zoom created at the trade show tapped into a growing interest in computing-by-movement. This form of artificial intelligence interprets movement the way a desktop registers a mouse click. Game systems like the Microsoft Kinect, which recently exceeded estimates and sold more than 8 million units over the holidays, can read a user's dance moves and compare them with the dancing avatars on screen.
The Lean & Zoom software, created by CMU grad student Chris Harrison, tracks how close your nose gets to the screen.
Mr. Harrison began development of Lean & Zoom when he came to CMU about 31/2 years ago to begin the computer science doctoral program. His previous big success was the Skinput, a technology that projected buttons on human skin so that pressing buttons on your forearm was like pressing buttons on a television remote.
Around that time, most laptops had started to come automatically equipped with built-in cameras. They were typically used for telecommunication services like Skype, but Mr. Harrison saw a different potential use: a "remarkably sophisticated sensor" capable of "Superman-like magnification," he said.
First Published January 21, 2011 12:00 am
