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Microsoft's research division has released a video detailing a design developed for an augmented mechanical keyboard. It appears to offer a novel way of interacting with devices, that blends together the work of a keyboard, mouse and touchscreen into a single module.

The keyboard is designed to allow users to type using a combination of traditional desktop actions and natural gestures such as touching and swiping. The goal is, unsurprisingly, to make typing and navigation faster and easier by allowing users to transfer immediately between text entry and gestures without having to move their hands away from the standard typing position.


In the video, Microsoft demos how easy it is to switch from typing to scrolling -- which involves stroking the keyboard with a downwards motion -- switching between applications by hovering your hand over the keys and even pinching to zoom. Another possibility is using it for gaming -- in the video someone uses an imaginary steering wheel just above the keyboard.

It's been a while since we've seen Microsoft prove truly innovative in the computing realm, but given that it also developed the Kinect, we shouldn't be surprised that it's now extending the gesture-sensing tech into other areas of its business.

Using infrared sensors embedded between the keys of a normal keyboard, the device is able to sense a wide range of rich motion gestures that can be formed on or directly above it. The sensors are interspersed between the keys of a mechanical keyboard in a 16x4 formation to form a low-resolution matrix that, according to Microsoft, results in "coarse but high frame-rate motion data".


This means the keyboard can sense rapid movement across it and gestures in a small area directly above it.

What Microsoft has done is incorporate the instinctive gestures we have all grown familiar with following the widespread adoption of touchscreen products into a keyboard, without losing any of the typing functionality necessary for lengthy word processing. This obviously has applications in the desktop world, but could also be seriously useful for mobile products including the Microsoft Surface.

Most manufacturers have been very keen on incorporating that gesture-based functionality into the screens of devices themselves, but if you're using a device with a keyboard it makes more sense that your hands should be able to interact with that device without having to move to a whole new position. Microsoft has yet to say what it's future plans are for the keyboard, but we're extremely keen to find out.