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As I posted below, Microsoft's Applied Sciences Group did something similar (I guess) back in 2011:

https://www.microsoft.com/applied-sciences/uploads/publicati...

https://www.microsoft.com/applied-sciences/projects/the-wedg...

I remember a friend on a team adjacent to the surface table team talking about them trying to do this when they switched from projection tables to tables with screens in them. As I recall with the projector based tables (the ones that looked like old cocktail arcade tables) I think they were using an ir camera to detect items and touches on the 'screen'.

Yes, the original Surface tabletop used IR cameras. Its successor, the Samsung SUR40 had in-cell sensing, i.e. photosensors embedded into the LCD so that it could capture a 960x540 image of the table surface.

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