Digital keyboard

Written in Mar 2009 by Anthony Stonehouse
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Art Lebedev studio designed a keyboard that blends traditional with an emerging screen-based model a few years ago called the Optimus Maximus. The keyboard features OLED displays under each key that are capable of displaying video at up to 10fps. This makes it possible to have a customised keyboard for each application using letters or icons that animate, or even separate languages, at the relatively high cost of €1257 though.

Optimus Maximus

Their concept model however takes this idea one step further and removes the physical keys, which means there are no restrictions on their shape and size of them, allowing for complete customisability. Although this concept has been around for over a year I could really see it becoming popular now — helped by the boom in touch screen interfaces from devices such as the iPhone and the Wacom Cintiq. No release date or price yet.

Optimus Tactus



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