When we 1st read about this hardware + software company ‘LITHO’ we were taken up with the idea. ‘LITHO’ is the future, designed to interact with & control a spectrum of fresh technology such as the Internet of Things (IoT), augmented reality (AR) & virtual reality (VR). This finger-worn controller eases difficulties of connecting our physical environment with current digital options.
The idea behind the hardware was to build a more “intuitive interface“, which would smooth the creation of 3D elements & units connected to the Internet such as smarthome devices. The young developers Nat Martin & Charlie Bruce believe that smartphones, which are currently the interface of choice for controlling these new technologies, are “limited” as they’ve been designed to work with 2D rather than 3D.
In an email interview, CEO Nat explained about the problem they were trying to solve with Litho:
Computing is increasingly structured round the real world rather than the desktop. With the advent of smart devices such as lights, thermostats, & door locks, physical things are becoming digitally connected. Equally, with the advent of AR, digital things are becoming physically anchored in the real world . These are 2 sides of the same coin – digital interactions are entering physical space.
For these spatial interactions, the primary interface is the smartphone. However, smartphones were designed to interact with 2D Content on screens. Trying to interact with objects in the real world through a smartphone is like trying to do heart surgery with a spork. More often than not our phones end up being a frustrating barrier to the digital world, rather than a tool to enable interactions with it.
Having an input device, designed from the ground up for 3D interaction, opens a whole new paradigm of mobile interactions. Instead of an awkward and frustrating interface, developers can create precise yet effortless interactions in 3D space. This opens up a whole new range of use cases – architects & designers can create precise 3D models in the context of the real world, & gamers can create a virtual theme park in their back garden simply by pointing & drawing. At home, instead of opening up a smartphone app, searching for the right bulb, & operating a virtual dimmer, you can simply point & swipe to dim your lights.
How it works:
LITHO has a set of tactile sensitive motion sensors built in that will enable a sort of point-and-create or point-and-control scenario, which could have more than a few mind-blowing applications – imagine creating a unique virtual world by simply drawing whatever your heart desires in any space whatsoever, or controlling your smarthome light-dimmer or door-locks by simply pointing at them (without needing to use your phone).
If you consider how effective this unobtrusive device could be for gamers or architects, you begin to envisage the broad ambit of conducive applications. The device designed as a one-size-fits-all ‘ring’, slips comfortably between the index & middle fingers, & is small enough to fit into any pocket or purse.
LITHO acts as a bridge, which connects via Bluetooth, to either a smartphone or headset, & uses Haptic feedback to convey touch based directives to 3rd party apps. The team behind LITHO has made their technology available to developers as an SDK, so that bright minds are harnessed, to bring out the best, most imaginative applications for the device.
LITHO is built on Unity, which is a 3D gaming application, which allows the device to identify both directions of movement, & the elements intended for manipulation. This gives the device an advantage over other available common interfaces such as unaided smartphones. This device supports Microsoft’s Hololens,& has been built to work with Apple’s ARKit (Augmented Reality Kit) although it also offers limited support for Android’s ARCore. LITHO has elicited a buzz of excitement from investors & has secured seed funding from Greycroft, Paul Heydon & Chris Albinson, among others.
Says, Nat:
Our intuitive interface uses a combination of hardware & software. LITHO itself is an unobtrusive finger-worn controller that connects via Bluetooth to your smartphone or AR headset. The controller has a capacitive touch surface on the underside – allowing precise 2D input, scrolling and tapping. It also has an array of motion sensors & provides haptic feedback.
The controller is complemented by the LITHO SDK for Unity that, by fusing data from the phone’s camera and the motion sensors in the controller, provides context-aware pointing information. This allows developers to make apps which can not only identify the vector in which the wearer is pointing, but where they are pointing in the real world.
The LITHO SDK also provides an interaction framework of off-the-shelf solutions to core interactions, including templates for tools such as object creation, movement & deletion, making it easy for developers to quickly build delightful & intuitive experiences.
