In fact, object recognition is almost exactly the same as touch recognition. A game with bouncing balls would bounce off of a camera just as it would a finger or hand. The nice thing about this is that it helps merge technology with the real world. That means that in the paint app, you can use the paintbrush rather than your finger, and have the same effect. And in the air hockey app, the puck and goalie mallets from any other table work perfectly.

But when it comes to Microsoft Surface, there is object recognition and there is object recognition. What I mean is that Surface can do more than just say “hey, there is an object on me”.

Microsoft Surface can also recognize specific objects, what they are, and interact with them!

In order for Surface to recognize what an object is you have to put a tag on it. These are called byte tags, and they look a lot like a domino:

When an object with a tag is placed on the Surface, the relation between the tag and the object is recognized, and from there on out, it is recognized as that object. So if you put a camera down with a tag in relation to that camera, the Surface recognizes the object as a camera.

This has no use in simple things such as a paintbrush or airhockey puck/goalie mallets as mentioned before. This is used when sharing data between digital electronics and Surface, such as cameras, mp3 players, and cell phones.

But you need more than just a tag to do that. For the data transfers, Microsoft Surface uses Bluetooth 2.0. So once you place your camera (which has a tag on it), and it is recognized as a camera, Bluetooth 2.0 downloads all of the images onto surface, and creates a spill out effect. It’s as simple as that, but at the same time, very advanced.