Group items tagged

LONG BEACH, California (AFP) — US university researchers have created a portable "sixth sense" device powered by commercial products that can seamlessly channel Internet information into daily routines.The device created by Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) scientists can turn any surface into a touch-screen for computing, controlled by simple hand gestures.The gadget can even take photographs if a user frames a scene with his or her hands, or project a watch face with the proper time on a wrist if the user makes a circle there with a finger.The MIT wizards cobbled a Web camera, a battery-powered projector and a mobile telephone into a gizmo that can be worn like jewelry. Signals from the camera and projector are relayed to smart phones with Internet connections."Other than letting some of you live out your fantasy of looking as cool as Tom Cruise in 'Minority Report' it can really let you connect as a sixth sense device with whatever is in front of you," said MIT researcher Patty Maes.Maes used a Technology, Entertainment, Design Conference stage in Southern California on Wednesday to unveil the futuristic gadget made from store-bought components costing about 300 dollars (US).The device can recognize items on store shelves, retrieving and projecting information about products or even providing quick signals to let users know which choices suit their tastes.The gadget can look at an airplane ticket and let the user know whether the flight is on time, or recognize books in a book store and then project reviews or author information from the Internet onto blank pages.The gizmo can recognize articles in newspapers, retrieve the latest related stories or video from the Internet and play them on pages.

Interacting with your computer by waving your hands may require just a pair of multicolored gloves and a webcam, say two researchers at MIT who have made a breakthrough in gesture-based computing that’s inexpensive and easy to use. A pair of lycra gloves — with 20 irregularly shaped patches in 10 different colors — held in front of a webcam can generate a unique pattern with every wave of the hand or flex of the finger. That can be matched against a database of gestures and translated into commands for the computer. The gloves can cost just about a dollar to manufacture, say the researchers. “This gets the 3-D configuration of your hand and your fingers,” says Robert Wang, a graduate student in the computer science and artificial intelligence lab at MIT. “We get how your fingers are flexing.” Wang developed the system with Jovan Popović, an associate professor of electrical engineering and computer science at MIT. The technology could be used in videogames where gamers could pick up and move objects using hand gestures and by engineers and artists to manipulate 3-D models.

Augmented reality, a capability that has been around for decades, is shifting from what was once seen as a gimmick to a bonafide game-changer.

Various forms of augmented reality, starting with early head-mounted displays, have been around for more than 30 years. Over that time, increased bandwidth and smart phone adoption, as well as a proliferation of AR browser applications, have helped AR evolve from a family of cool gadgets on the periphery of graphics and visualization technologies to an increasingly central player in the technology landscape.

Augmented reality (AR) refers to the addition of a computer-assisted contextual layer of information over the real world, creating a reality that is enhanced or augmented.

The Cube is a turnkey, ‘plug and play’ interactive display unit that transforms any space of any size into a gesture-based interactive entertainment and advertising experience.  Just put The Cube on the floor or a table, or against a wall, and it instantly creates an engaging 5' x 4' (aprox.) foot interactive display that visitors can control with simple motions.  Well-suited for small spaces and for traveling promotions, The Cube gives customers access to GestureTek’s full library of over 70 eye-catching special effects and games.  Applications can be projected onto any surface, immediately transforming the surface into an interactive entertainment medium for the enjoyment of visitors.

The game changer here is that instead of using prohibitively expensive and complex motion capture systems incorporating sensors placed around the body (like those used in Hollywood special FX) his system uses the computer's web-cam to identify a hand position from a database of 100,000 pre-stored images. Once it finds a match it displays it on screen, and repeats this several times per second enabling it to recreate gestures in real time. A similar system, developed by Javier Romero and Danica Kragic of the Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm, is attempting to do the same thing using your hand's flesh tones, meaning you don't even have to wear a glove at all. Perhaps this will be the basis for the system that enables gestural UI for the masses. An application that is cheap and simple. Genuinely different and new, yet intuitive to use. We've all seen the future. Maybe it isn't as far away as we think.

Elliptic labs is known for its clever, gesture-based touch-free controls for computing. Then the iPad came along like a techno-gift for the team, and they're due to show a prototype dock for iPads at CES that is a sci-fi dream come true.Gesture-controls, even if they're achieved via clever hacks, have hit the news recently because of Microsoft's fascinating Kinect toy for Xbox 360, but the core tech ideas behind Kinect are far from new. Elliptic Labs, a Norwegian company that specializes in advanced ultrasound sensor tech, has been developing clever touch-free gesture controls for tablet computing purposes for a while. Back in September at the IFA show the labs demonstrated their development platform--shown in action in the video below:

After about six months of research and programming for his master's thesis, Georg Hackenberg at the Fraunhofer Institute for Applied Information Technology has managed to create what he and his colleagues are calling a 3-D noncontact gesture-based computer interface. "A special image analysis algorithm filters out the positions of the hands and fingers," Hackenberg said. "This is achieved in real-time through the use of intelligent filtering of the incoming data. The raw data can be viewed as a kind of 3-D mountain landscape, with the peak regions representing the hands or fingers." Hackenberg, who is based at the institute just outside of Bonn, said that the system is a prototype technology demo and is essentially an advanced infrared sensor on a tripod attached to a desktop computer. A 3-D wireframe displayed on the monitor serves as the desktop for the system. When someone is standing in front of the system, the infrared sensor picks up the movements of their hands, interpreting them into commands.

In this near-future scenario, just one of many possible applications for the technology, the concept of augmented reality makes air travel more bearable. More than just a series of visual cues, the technology can even combine auditory sensors and other stimuli to make high-tech data part of your everyday life. Like robotics, there’s a visceral and physical representation of the underlying artificial intelligence involved. And with real-world implications that range from expediting everyday business travel to fueling potential military research, facilitating heightened responses in emergency scenarios and powering the world’s most immersive video games, augmented reality will forever change how we think about data and how we process information.“Augmented reality will ultimately become a part of everyday life,” explains Sam Bergen, an associate art director for digital innovation at the ad agency Ogilvy and Mather. “Kids will use it in school as a learning tool – imagine Google Earth with AR- or AR-enabled text books. Shoppers will use it to see what products will look like in their home. Consumers will use it to visually determine how to set up a computer. Architects and city planners will even use it to see how new construction will look, feel, and affect the area they are developing.”

Let me start by declaring that we, as human beings DO NOT have the ability to communicate with computers. Ever since the modern user interface based the WIMP system of Xerox Corp. came about people have found ways to use applications design around tasks and features. There are programmers and there are users. Computers work digitally, and humans cannot easily translate information to store and instruct computers. This has been a limitation and will be, for a long time. Several companies have tried to get out of this cycle by introducing newer touch and gesture based user interface which hold little value beyond novelty. These have been shown in several movies (including Iron Man 2 – where Tony Shark check’s out pictures of the Black Widow online on his table-top display) However, I’m glad that companies are taking this seriously after the touch interface of the iPhone sparked of a UI craze that has picked up quite a pace. One experimental entrant is the MS Surface. This is a table size computer with the screen facing up and is multi-touch capable. Several great instances of object recognition and collaboration of devices and people have been demonstrated on this device, but it hasn’t been taken seriously as yet (which is probably a cost factor for now)