Ah, the MIT Media Lab, home to
Big Bird's illegitimate progeny,
augmented reality projects aplenty, and now three-dimensional gestural computing. The new bi-directional display being demoed by the Cambridge-based boffins performs both multitouch functions that we're familiar with and hand movement recognition in the space in front of the screen -- which we're
also familiar with, but mostly
from the movies. The gestural motion tracking is done via embedded optical sensors behind the display, which are allowed to see what you're doing by the LCD alternating rapidly (invisible to the human eye, but probably not to human pedantry) between what it's displaying to the viewer and a pattern for the camera array. This differs from projects like
Natal, which have the camera offset from the display and therefore cannot work at short distances, but if you want even more detail, you'll find it in the informative video after the break.
[Thanks,
Rohit]
posted December 11th 2009 5:31AM
That is deadset amazing!
Awesome, although I'd keep detecting camera and diffusers out of the screen area - this one produces noticeable flicker.
so one day I can change channel and volume by waving my hands around as one of the applications of this? im down
@(Unverified) You can kinda do that with the 'wand remote control' (http://www.iwantoneofthose.com/gadgets-gizmos/the-wand-remote-control/index.html)
@(Unverified)
That day is about 6 months away with the Microsoft XBox 360 motion sensor camera.
http://vimeo.com/2376525
with FluidTunes you can control iTunes with iSight
The force is strong with this one...
Cool concept. Doesn't look that practical though, at least in this iteration: Really laggy and look how brightly they had to light his hand!
@(Unverified) right, cuz this will OBVIOUSLY be the version they release to the public. Definitely NOT a prototype at all!
/sarcasm
@Brokinarrow Yeah, hence why I said "in this iteration".
@(Unverified) because everyone gets EVERYTHING perfect the FIRST time its made. its a freaking prototype get over it "OH NO THE PROTOTYPE DOESNT WORK AT ALL TO MY LIKINGS THEREFORE IT WILL NEVER WORK BECAUSE NOBODY IS AS SMART AS ME AND KNOWS THAT THERE IS A LAG AND I CANT HAVE A BRIGHT HAND OH NO!!!!" please shut up.
French mime's seems a very small target group to develop for.
And they should use a yummy croissant instead of a tie fighter as demonstration object.
@Wwhat That's a TIE Bomber. The fighter has those big 'wheel' things around a tiny spherical core.
(Why yes, I DID spend far too much time playing the X-Wing series as a youth, thank you).
@(Unverified) FAIL - that is Darth Vader's TIE fighter, the TIE bombers had a dual-hull design and were much wider. Thanks for trying though :D
@Brokinarrow The model is a TIE Advanced, no way to tell if it's Vader's from that picture.
What does TIE stand for anyway?
@Wwhat
Twin Ion Engine afaik
This just screams minority report...
That'll be sure to piss off young people 20 years from now when the old farts (like me, being the 20-something crowd right now) have an impulse to actually touch their monitors to control them, much like some older people today have an impulse to touch the monitor to point something out.
@(Unverified) you've never pointed at something at a monitor? Riiiiight...
Mmmm, science-fictioney!
Is it just me or was the music kinda creepy? (like Carnival/Circus music!)
This is pretty cool. Cant wait till i can have that in my room :-p
That is really cool. I want one! I can think of many more practical uses for this than multi-touch. Tap and drag would be awesome if you didn't have to keep your finger in contact. It has a huge possiblity to simplify gestures as well as add extra depth (pardon the pun) by sensing contact and air gestures.
Looks neat. But they're going to have to make it pretty smart. My magic mouse makes Goole Maps almost useless, as it randomly zooms in and out... it's REALLY frustrating.
A seriously awesome piece of technology and a step (ok, several steps) in the right direction towards that coveted "Minority Report" experience (seriously, has anybody come out with a touch-based product in the last 2 years that hasn't referenced that movie?). Anyways, my point is...did MIT really have to go over-the-top nerd and have the Star Wars space fighters as their 3D models to manipulate? Really? Shoulda just put on a Chewie mask and spoken in Yoda-ese the whole time..."Rotate the figures, you can."
@balwheeler
I think we are way past Minority report. We just haven't put it out their for people to use yet due to testing. The only thing from minority report that they haven't pushed on is the retinal detectors. I guess have laser shooting into your eyes to identify you is a bit scary at this day and age.
@balwheeler well, yeah, you're right, we're way past minority report in R&D, but I sure don't have anything like that in my house. The average person doesn't. My mom doesn't (though she does have an iPhone, but that's another story...). Anyways, I'm just saying Minority Report for the mass market.
Ugh! I dunno about the rest of you, but that guys voice drove me goddamn crazy! Like a mix between a gay/retard/southpark voice. Detracted from the science I tell you!
@(Unverified)
He sounded like the fat white guy on the Office.
Cool, a screen that looks AT YOU.
The dark side of the Force is a pathway to many abilities some consider to be…unnatural.
Wait. So you're gonna put two or more pinholes in the screen to reach the sensor display? Wow. Perhaps now we'll finally have an answer to the age old question, does The Force behave more like an object or a wave.
Does it only work if you have six fingers though?
1984 just came a little closer. creeeeperrrr
@wilfulmac Exactly my thought. Hello, Big Brother!
(Mind you, I still want one!)
Minority Report... One step closer to Pre-crime...
Saying "Old Hat" all the time makes the writers of Engadget seem "Old Hat"...please stop lol. It's not that clever.
I hope it will have cultural sensitivity thresholds ... from near-comatose to manic: Asian, British, European, Mediterranean ... when gestures are used as input, one size most definitely does not fit all.
Why is this so laggy?
@(Unverified)
Get off your slow netbook - Get your account verified, and stop trying to view Youtube videos on your dialup!
@Phen
What the cock are you talking about?
I'm at work on a fiber backbone moron.
I meant why are the graphics renderings and movements in the video laggy.
The music and that weird looking pink rabbit really did it for me... With videos like this, one could teach crack heads rocket science
So MIT is designing TIE bombers too
So long what little privacy we have left, now every screen has 500 little cameras built into it... I'm sure no one is going to take advantage of that fact...
http://www.engadget.com/2006/04/26/apple-patent-embeds-thousands-of-cameras-among-lcd-pixels/
seems like this could be done (other than the lighting demo) with one of these projects http://johnnylee.net/projects/wii/ or http://instruct1.cit.cornell.edu/courses/ece576/FinalProjects/f2009/ty244_jgs33/ty244_jgs33/ty244_jgs33/index.html
just to point out, he's in a nearly black room wearing a black shirt, and his hand is lighted, showing that this probably will have trouble when they begin introducing real-life situations.
The alternating LCD diffuser sounds very similar to the Microsoft Surface SecondLight concept.
Cool tech, annoying narrator.
The whole Minority Report style interface looks cool, but would you want to wave your arms at the computer 8 hours a day? I think a more usable futuristic gesture/touch interface would be a large multi-touch screen in a tilted drafting table-style desk maybe with a haptic keyboard at the bottom.
Or it could be used to add multi-touch to a screen tablet like the Cintiq in a way that lets the fingers be used in pen mode. This would allow the fingers to be tracked and a cursor (or cursors) moved while hovering,saving surface contact for clicking and dragging. Add a little haptic feedback for the items on screen, and it would be like the icons are physical objects you are moving with your fingers. Imagine dragging your finger across a spreadsheet and feeling the borders between cells as raised edges.
I'm not sure you can really get rid of hands-on-the-desk, upright-display because of ergonomics. If your touch surface had a 1-1 relationship to the screen, then it would come to feel like you are manipulating the display directly without your hands needing to leave the desk.
Any computer interface that requires more than small, efficient movements of the fingers and wrist is doomed to fail IMO.