Your fingers to be the next-gen computer interface

The University of Buffalo's mad scientists are hoping that the "Fingertip Digitizer" will kick off the next phase in computer interfaces by harnessing people's learned physical motions and movement to kill the UI learning curve. All one needs to do is simply slip the sleeve onto their fingers and the device's thin-film embedded force sensors and tri-axial accelerometer will track their movements in real-time, even providing tactile feedback corresponding to physical motions and virtual environments. One might reminisce of a Tom Cruise flick or other implementations of gesture interface control, but the "Fingertip Digitizer" works a bit different then most by allowing the user to not only to command the system with motion, but also feel it (perhaps most similarly to Novint's Falcon). For example, if you move your hand to pick up a ball, you will not only instruct the computer to grab the ball, but feel the pressure and weight of the ball in your hand; should you motion pulling the trigger on a sniper rifle in an FPS, you'll feel that 1.5-pound hair-trigger move ever so slightly with your index finger. The whole system is going to be on display at this year's SIGGRAPH if you're nearby and want to peep one vision of future haptic interfaces, but otherwise you'll have to wait until this system hits commercial applications within about three years to get your mitts on these mitts.

[J�rgen @ Aug 4th 2006 6:51AM]

forgotten the gorilla arm already?

[J�rgen @ Aug 4th 2006 6:54AM]

ah incase you do not know about the gorilla arm: http://www.jargon.net/jargonfile/g/gorillaarm.html

[Gaz @ Aug 4th 2006 6:58AM]

Spoilsport!

[Martin @ Aug 4th 2006 7:25AM]

So why do artists not suffer from Gorilla arm? If they do, then it doesn't stop them!

[Keef @ Aug 4th 2006 7:37AM]

then y do they think the Wii-mote is a gd interface then?

i personaly dont like it but its basicaly the same sept u aint touching a screen.... just pointing at 1 lol

[TimeDevil @ Aug 4th 2006 9:16AM]

I hope I'm not smashing my head against the "Add your comments button" but, how can a haptic sleeve over your fingers convey weight?

First time poster, so grammer and spell!ng checked for the gasillionth time.

[pmiller @ Aug 4th 2006 10:02AM]

I am a bit skeptical. If one is playing pool, one must use two hands. When playing pool, you have a rigid object, keeping your second, more forward hand, lined up with your other hand. If you were to use these gloves, what would there be to keep the front hand lined up with the back? You'll end up having two completely misaligned hands, and although the weight may be lined up to both hands, I feel this will really only be able to handle one handed instances. I'm not sure how advanced the weight/tactile abilities are of these gloves, but unless it can somehow basically allow you to move your hands around in real 3-d space, and prevent them from, say, going inside of a digital 3-d solid box, then the technology is flawed.

or just doomed.

eitherway, i have to get back to work.....

[Nozzi @ Aug 4th 2006 11:23AM]

the idea of a touchscreen table LCD. is as good as its going to get. anything more is geek fantasy.

holographic, motion sensing, force feedback virtual reality is never going to be totally real unless your put to sleep matrix style... thats when Ill decide which pill i wanna take.

[Nozzi @ Aug 4th 2006 11:27AM]

PS : is "gorilla arm" like wankers cramp?

[Play @ Aug 4th 2006 12:58PM]

Similar to this ?
http://ted.com/tedtalks/tedtalksplayer.cfm?key=j_han&flashEnabled=1

http://mrl.nyu.edu/~jhan/ftirtouch/

This is working like in minority report except it's real.

[Galley @ Aug 5th 2006 9:10AM]

Jeff Han's interface from TED is jaw-dropping.

[Sj @ Aug 5th 2006 2:32PM]

Maybe we can have an end to losing those thumb drives, how cool would a real thumb drive be?