Imagine a desk that creates experiences for you, one that can help your productivity, one you can interact with. No, this isn’t Knight Rider – The Office Edition, it is a new research project brought to you by the good folks at Applied Computer Education.

The physical desk itself will behave as a portable computer card that is designed to fold down and nest into a smaller format. Technologies that will be embedded into the Smart Desk include a facial recognition system, a conversational user interface built on Natural Language Processing, and ultrahaptic controls. The prototype of the physical cart is presently in the works and we anticipate it this structure will be complete around in mid-summer 2018.

End goals for this project means that a user could be identified when they occupy the desk space, in turn the desk would customize the environment and settings to the user’s preferences. The user would be able to interact with their environment not only by traditional mouse and keyboard, but also through conversational features and ultrahaptic controls. We anticipate being able to station one or more smart desks to use in the future RRC Innovation Centre.