We asked speaker Daniel Avrahami, Senior Research at Intel, to share some of his thoughts on recent innovations in the interactive displays industry, and what he's most looking forward to learning more about at Interactive Displays 2011. Daniel will be presenting "Nomadic Smart Spaces: Portable Perception for Laptops and Tablets" at the conference.

From your perspective, what are the most innovative technologies for interactive displays in the market currently?
The area of interactive displays is fast-paced. Calling technologies "most innovative" is challenging, but I'll pick a couple out of many. From the perspective of user-input, depth cameras are transforming what is possible in terms of interaction. These cameras can turn any table into a touch surface, or turn the whole body into a sophisticated gamer controller (as in Microsoft Kinect). From the output side, I find auto-stereoscopic displays to be very interesting, but also challenging. To me, it is key to be able to deliver 3D images without the use of accessories. With products such as the Nintendo 3DS already on the market, this type of display is sure to gain momentum.

What are the issues that still need to be addressed?
Both of these technologies also pose many challenges. While depth cameras significantly simplify the tasks for computer vision, the variety of environments and users still make things very difficult. Delivering a robust and accurate experience that is also very fast is going to remain a challenge for quite some time. Auto-stereoscopic displays work reasonably well when they are small, because the user can orient the display such that they are in the 3D sweet spot. This becomes a major challenge when the displays are large and immobile. This will have to be figured out before larger auto-stereoscopic displays can become mainstream.

What are you looking forward to learning more about at the conference this month?
I'm excited about all the innovative technologies that will be shown at the conference. The beauty of it is that we will see interactive displays that are small, mobile and personal all the way to interactive displays that occupy an entire room or wall and can be used by many people.