Sun's SPOT: a poor man's Minority Report interface

What happens when you combine Sun's Small Programmable Object Technology with its Project Looking Glass 3D user interface environment, and add a glove with an accelerometer? Apparently, the second third attempt at the early 21st century's equivalent of Minority Report's glove based user interface, with a demo video showing an operator browsing a desktop using simply hand and finger motions. There's a pretty noticeable lag, the system still uses a mouse pointer, and the operator obviously has to stand dead still for it to work, but this is probably the closest anyone has come to emulating the geek dream that is the pre-crime memory navigator that Tom Cruise evangelized in the film. It's about time that someone figured out a system that could replace the humble mouse: unfortunately, this is only a baby step towards that goal.

[Via sLists; thanks, akhel]

[Nawaf Alsabhan @ Oct 21st 2007 7:59AM]

mmmKay..

[michas_pi @ Oct 21st 2007 8:28AM]

Will we be able to slide in glass panels that are really some kind of storage device into the side of the display?

If so, I'm game.

[nih @ Oct 21st 2007 8:29AM]

That woman has the breasts of a goddess. Wait till you get to the side-on videos.

[nih @ Oct 21st 2007 8:30AM]

Oh yeah, that sun os thing is nice too. I'd prefer a Windows interface though. Any idea what it's going to cost?

[nih @ Oct 21st 2007 11:17AM]

Such bitterness can only come from experience. We could be don't-know-any-girls buddies!

[Adrian Williams @ Oct 21st 2007 4:12PM]

I was going to say I'll HIT IT but nih beat me to it
//now what's this dohicky again

[Arne Martin Aurlien @ Oct 21st 2007 8:35AM]

I saw some Sun-people demo this more than a year ago.

[Fank @ Oct 21st 2007 9:18AM]

"Tom Cruise evangelized"

LOL @ SCIENTOLOGY

[DJDole @ Oct 21st 2007 9:57AM]

"We ave" ... only a mediocre grasp on the English language.

[xj @ Oct 21st 2007 10:33AM]

Dude, that's totally unnecessary. English is obviously not her 1st language but she can speak it perfectly well. Not only that but she's also a very in what she does too. Those things can be put to thousands of good uses. Don't be a douche and stop making fun of people's accents.

[xj @ Oct 21st 2007 10:35AM]

*very talented

[DJDole @ Oct 21st 2007 12:15PM]

I wasn't joking about her accent. Everybody has an accent.

I was joking about the number of times she said "We have _____" in reference to another feature of the device. She could have easily have said "another feature included was _____" or mixed it up a bit.
But it was a bit distracting that when she was describing the features, every other sentence was "we also have _____".

Also, I never said anything about the tech. We all can see that the technology is quite useful.
I just didn't feel the need to state the obvious.

As to being a douche, IMO the best way to make yourself look like a douche would be to demonstrate the inability to take a joke. Especially one that was made without any hatred or malice at all.

Over sensitivity to everything anyone says is not only annoying as hell, it's dangerous.
If we can't laugh at ourselves, then we're bound to lash out at others. You've demonstrated that enough yourself.

[L. Cyphre @ Oct 21st 2007 10:41AM]

I imagine waving my hands in the air for several hours would be pretty tiring. It may look cool but I don't think it will really replace a mouse... Same with voice recognition btw. ("Open folder, femdom porn!")

[lo-kii @ Oct 21st 2007 12:11PM]

that does look like a lot of fun.

[Kai Thompson @ Oct 21st 2007 2:18PM]

It looks pretty neat, but I think this system is much more interesting: http://www.perceptivepixel.com/.

[Semantic Overload @ Oct 21st 2007 3:26PM]

Well... What about this one?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PLhMVNdplJc

[Steph @ Oct 21st 2007 4:53PM]

That actually looks kinda shitty and unnecessarily complicated and unintuitive, esp. compared to this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9zGDNFpOMcA , which when I first saw it I was absolutely amazed by. Multi-touch is totally the future of computing if you ask me.

[uberfu @ Oct 22nd 2007 9:01AM]

The links and Perceptive Pixel are one in the same_

Jeff Han did those demos and Perceptive Pixel is his company that he has spun off from the University that he works at_

they are in development of the multi-touch tech that we are seeing in the demos_

[Boom @ Oct 21st 2007 4:57PM]

That's Angela, one of Sun's technology evangelists. She did this demo at JavaOne last May.

[R @ Oct 21st 2007 9:17PM]

For a possible replacement of the mouse...

check this out

www.perceptivepixel.com

:)

[R @ Oct 21st 2007 9:18PM]

oh damn, its already posted..! :P

[Coleman Foley @ Oct 21st 2007 11:17PM]

that's so cool.

[BouncinDave @ Oct 22nd 2007 7:58AM]

We had a technology evangelist from Sun come to my university and give a lecture, and this was what he demoed.

Problem was, the system did not work very well, and the Sun SPOT was erratically appearing on and off the system.

Oh well, good idea in principle i guess!

[uberfu @ Oct 22nd 2007 9:05AM]

The virtual environment with the glove stuff was out way before Minority Report_

Johnny Mnemonic [w/ Keanu Reeves] did it about 7 years before Tom Cruise slipped on the "gloves"