This sounds like it might mean trouble for blind people.
Rachel
Giving Electronic Commands With Body Language
By ASHLEE VANCE NYT January 12, 2010
LAS VEGAS — The technology industry is going retro — moving away from
remote controls, mice and joysticks to something that arrives without
batteries, wires or a user manual.
It's called a hand.
In the coming months, the likes of Microsoft, Hitachi and major PC
makers will begin selling devices that will allow people to flip
channels on the TV or move documents on a computer monitor with
simple hand gestures. The technology, one of the most significant
changes to human-device interfaces since the mouse appeared next to
computers in the early 1980s, was being shown in private sessions
during the immense Consumer Electronics Show here last week. Past
attempts at similar technology have proved clunky and disappointing.
In contrast, the latest crop of gesture-powered devices arrives with
a refreshing surprise: they actually work.
"Everything is finally moving in the right direction," said Vincent
John Vincent, the co-founder of GestureTek, a company that makes
software for gesture devices.
Manipulating the screen with the flick of the wrist will remind many
people of the 2002 film "Minority Report" in which Tom Cruise moves
images and documents around on futuristic computer screens with a few
sweeping gestures. The real-life technology will call for similar
flair and some subtlety. Stand in front of a TV armed with a gesture
technology camera, and you can turn on the set with a soft punch into
the air. Flipping through channels requires a twist of the hand, and
raising the volume occurs with an upward pat. If there is a photo on
the screen, you can enlarge it by holding your hands in the air and
spreading them apart and shrink it by bringing your hands back
together as you would do with your fingers on a cellphone touch screen.
The gesture revolution will go mainstream later this year when
Microsoft releases a new video game system known at this time as
Project Natal. The gaming system is Microsoft's attempt to one-up
Nintendo's Wii.
Where the Wii requires hypersensitive hand-held controllers to
translate body motions into on-screen action, Microsoft's Natal will
require nothing more than the human body. Microsoft has demonstrated
games like dodge ball where people can jump, hurl balls at opponents
and dart out of the way of incoming balls using natural motions.
Other games have people contorting to fit through different shapes
and performing skateboard tricks.
Just as Microsoft's gaming system hits the market, so should TVs from
Hitachi in Japan that will let people turn on their screens, scan
through channels and change the volume on their sets with simple hand
motions. Laptops and other computers should also arrive later this
year with built-in cameras that can pick up similar gestures. Such
technology could make today's touch-screen tools obsolete as people
use gestures to control, for instance, the playback or fast-forward of a DVD.
To bring these gesture functions to life, device makers needed to
conquer what amounts to one of computer science's grand challenges.
Electronics had to see the world around them in fine detail through
tiny digital cameras. Such a task meant giving a TV, for example, a
way to identify people sitting on a couch and to recognize a certain
hand wave as a command and not a scratching of the nose.
Little things like the sun, room lights and people's annoying habit
of doing the unexpected stood as just some of the obstacles companies
had to overcome.
GestureTek, with offices in Silicon Valley and Ottawa, has spent a
quarter-century trying to perfect its technology and has enjoyed some
success. It helps TV weather people, museums and hotels create huge
interactive displays.
This past work, however, has relied on limited, standard cameras that
perceive the world in two dimensions. The major breakthrough with the
latest gesture technology comes through the use of cameras that see
the world in three dimensions, adding that crucial layer of depth
perception that helps a computer or TV recognize when someone tilts
their hand forward or nods their head.
Canesta, based in Sunnyvale, Calif., has spent 11 years developing
chips to power these types of 3-D cameras. In the early days, its
products were much larger than an entire desktop computer. Today, the
chip takes up less space than a fingernail. "We always had this grand
vision of being able to control electronics devices from a distance,"
said Cyrus Bamji, the chief technology officer at Canesta.
Competition in the gesture field has turned fierce as a result of the
sudden interest in the technology. In particular, Canesta and
PrimeSense, a Tel Aviv start-up, have fought to supply the 3-D chips
in Microsoft's Natal gaming system.
At last week's Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, executives and
engineers from Canesta and GestureTek were encamped in suites at the
Hilton near the main conference show floor as they shuttled
executives from Asian electronics makers in and out of their rooms
for secretive meetings.
Similarly, PrimeSense held invitation-only sessions at its tiny,
walled-off booth and forbade any photos or videos of its products.
In one demonstration, a camera using the PrimeSense chip could
distinguish among multiple people sitting on a couch and even tell
the difference between a person's jacket, shirt and under-shirt. And
with such technology it's impossible, try as you might, to lose your
remote control.
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