From the future: smartboards
 

Remember in Minority Report where the guy is moving all of the crap around on those boards with hand gestures? Looks like this comes pretty close:

http://mblog.lib.umich.edu/~rdivecha/archives/2006/02/the_world_of_sm.html

I want one...

Reminds me of that movie with Keanu Reevs(sp) where he revers engineered things. He used one just like that to traverse 3D blueprints.

Very cool.

My friend found the paper they published and I just read through it... Basically, they took a piece of plexiglass and polished the edges, then put high-power IR LEDs around the edges and put a video camera behind the glass. When you put your fingers on the glass, your fingers scatter the IR and the camera picks it up. Their own program uses the image to figure out where you're touching. My friend at UNO might try to build one.