Microsoft Research has said its hardware devices group is currently building micro-devices using micro electromechanical systems (MEMS) in an effort to build cheaper flat-panel displays with high resolution.
This insight came at Microsoft Research's TechFest 2007, the company's annual showcase of research projects, where the software giant is touting more than 100 innovations.
"We want displays to become as unobtrusive as wallpaper," said the research team. The group is set to demo the fruits of their research this week at TechFest.
MEMS technology is currently picking up steam for use in a bevy of entertainment products, including Nintendo's immensely popular Wii gaming console.
Also this week, Microsoft is showing off a "World-Wide Telescope" product that it claims allows people to turn their PC into "one of the most powerful ground-based telescopes in the world." The technology draws on tens of millions of digital images of stars, galaxies and quasars from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey, an astronomical project started several years ago to map out a large part of the universe.
Also among the new products being touted this week is Boku, a virtual robot in a simulated world, which has been debuted as a research project to teach kids basic programming skills. Using Xbox, kids as young as four years of age can program a robot to interact with its world, travel around among various objects the kids create, and even eat an apple, Microsoft said.