What If Your Entire Desk Were a Touchscreen? [Video]

Big touch surfaces are nothing new, but we like the approach taken here. A familiar form factor—the traditional sitting desk—mixed with the (now) ubiquitous tech of touchscreens. Is the BendDesk what your office will look like someday?

The prototype doesn't use the most sophisticated guts—relying on cameras and clunky projectors instead of an actual capacitive touch surface—but looks pretty snappy from the video demo. It may be chunky, but the results are slick. As well, the bottom part of the BendDesk can be used as—gasp!—an actual desk. Which is pretty great, really, as it would free up room for low-tech work, with plenty of screen real estate left over for pinching and pushing digital stuff. Right now the BendDesk is confined to the labs of Germany's RWTH Aachen University, but we hope this kind of clever design slinks its way out of academia. [Core77 via Engadget]