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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