I guess you don’t know you’re leading the pack unless you hear the other dogs barking at your heels. GestureTek is a company that puts out touch- and gesture-based interactive screens in more various forms than the Microsoft Surface project. From what I can tell, it doesn’t track as exactly or as reliably as the seriously stress-tested Surface, but it also has a more attractive form factor in this thing (autoplaying video warning). I can’t tell what it’s using to track movement, but it looks to be sufficient for the basic applications that would be running in, say, a mall kiosk: a map, sales, basic product browsing and so on.
Multi-touch and general touchscreen tech is the new tech Wild West, it seems, and like the Lotto, many will enter, only a few will win. Still, competition in this area is essential for innovation; every lackluster touchscreen phone that comes out gets immediately buried because the iPhone had already taken it to the next level. Same with the Surface, but that doesn’t mean either of those products are guaranteed against usurpation.
If you’re interested, head down to Florida on the 18th for the International Association for Amusement Parks and Attractions expo and check the thing out. (giggle)