(Credit: Joseph Maldonado; Weston Almond)
Alongside some more concrete PC announcements coming out of the IFA trade show, Lenovo also showed us a prototype laptop with an automatic hinge that can move and rotate the display by following voice commands.
The ThinkBook Auto Twist is only a prototype, with no current plans for a retail release, but it's an exciting proof of concept. Through simple voice commands, the laptop can automatically open, close, and rotate the lid. It can even transition all the way into tablet mode without any manual handling, and its screen also moves to track your face position via the camera.
(Credit: Joseph Maldonado)I tried out this device myself before today’s announcement; you can watch my experience in the video above and read some more detailed impressions below.
How It Works: Auto Twist and Shout
Lenovo uses the ThinkBook brand to deploy some of its more innovative features and products, though the Auto Twist is taking that much further than most. Plenty of full retail systems sell under the ThinkBook brand, but this is a full-on experiment and, in its current form, is not aiming to come to market.
(Credit: Joseph Maldonado)That means we have no pricing, specs, components, or other details to share here. Those simply aren’t a concern for Lenovo with this machine. The team wanted to develop a responsive, automated moving display, and it achieved that—it just so happens to be attached to this chassis, and the components aren’t essential at this stage of development.
What’s noteworthy is that it works well, though as I'll get into it, the Auto Twist's practical use cases are more debatable. Through simple voice commands like "Open," "Close," and "Tablet mode" (following a “Hi, Twist” wake command), the Auto Twist will act accordingly, raising the lid, closing the lid, or turning the screen 180 degrees and then laying flat (for tablet mode), respectively through its motorized hinge.
(Credit: Joseph Maldonado)The open and close commands are neat, but the ability to fully spin the display around and then recline was particularly impressive. The movement wasn't too fast, and, being a prototype, it was sometimes finicky in execution. It did not always respond to our voice commands, for instance, and movement occasionally wasn't smooth, but it mostly worked as intended. "Dance Mode" proved to be the biggest treat, essentially a demo mode to show off the full range of motion, complete with a ballet video and musical accompaniment.
Watch Me Move: Camera Tracking and Potential Uses Cases
The most potentially helpful feature—which we could see rolling out to other machines in isolation if this automated hinge were ever implemented—is the camera tracking. Toggling on tracking mode makes the webcam track your movements, and if you shift position enough, the rotating display hinge will adjust (up or down, left or right) to automatically face you and keep you "in frame."
(Credit: Joseph Maldonado)While the mechanical tracking action seemed somewhat eerie in practice, it worked surprisingly well and is an even more effective version of the recent trend toward AI-enhanced, software-based face centering and tracking. When I moved side to side or stood up and sat down, the camera moved horizontally and vertically without much delay, even adjusting to smaller movements as long as it justified re-centering me in the frame. On rare occasions, it lost tracking and got confused if multiple people came into the camera's view, but for a prototype state, it worked quite well.
Overall, the Auto Twist is perhaps a solution in search of a problem. It’s slower and arguably less convenient to talk to the PC (especially in public) than to open the screen yourself. However, its position tracking is a natural and functional feature, and even with those downsides, the voice commands could be a win for accessibility. Users unable to handle a laptop manually could move through these core, otherwise physical functions with their voice alone. Accessibility software commands exist, so why not extend that to the hardware?
We may (or may not) see this hinge or some of these features in future systems, but I admire the development work on this machine. Remember to check out the video up top to see it in action.