Microsoft’s Rock and Rails touchscreen helps you to massage your photos with both hands

In the event you ever become bored with poking away at your smartphone’s screen like a doorbell, you are not alone. The forward-looking folks over at Microsoft Research were working away at a brand new touchscreen system designed pick up on more natural, whole-hand movements, effectively allowing users to damage free from the finger-based paradigm that governs most tactile devices. Developed in coordination with engineers at Microsoft Surface, the company’s Rock and Rails interface can detect three basic hand gestures: a balled fist, which holds items at the screen, a longer hand that could align objects (see the cell marked “d,” at the right) and a curved paw, around which users can pivot images (see cell b). This taxonomy opens up new ways for users to crop, re-size or generally mess around with their UI elements, though it remains unclear whether the display will trickle all the way down to the buyer level anytime soon. For now, it sounds as if to function exclusively at the Surface , but more details should surface when the system’s developers release a paper on their project, later this year. Hit the source links to look a video of the object in action.