There is little "open source" research on hardware for novel user interfaces. Most of this stuff is published at scientific conferences like CHI, UIST, ITS, TEI. As "novelty" is quite important for publishing one's work at these conferences, there is little incentive for doing open research.

Some nice stuff and communities can be found at http://nuigroup.com/forums or http://hackaday.com/

(btw: Bret Victor apparently pulished his rant _after_ Touché had been submitted to CHI.)