gesture controls
Latest
Lexus’s first autonomous EV has drones and ‘artificial muscle technology’
Lexus is finally ready to unveil its first electric vehicle prototype. At the Tokyo Motor Show today, it pulled back the curtain on its LF-30 Electric Concept, its vision for the next generation of EVs.
The Galaxy Note 10 S Pen is also a wand that controls your phone
Today, Samsung confirmed a poorly kept secret. The Galaxy Note 10 S Pen will offer gesture controls, or "Air Actions." This goes one step further than the Note 9 S Pen, which acts as a remote control. Now, you'll be able to control the Note 10 (and Note 10+) with a wave of the stylus. The S Pen will allow you to activate shortcuts and perform specific actions by drawing shapes above the screen. As you can with the Galaxy Tab S6, you'll be able to swish-and-flick to switch between front- and rear-facing cameras and toggle through camera modes.
Pioneer's latest Raku Navi GPS units take commands from hand gestures
An AR heads-up display wasn't the only navigation hardware Pioneer showed off at CEATEC 2012. The firm also took the opportunity to tear the wraps off a new line of gesture-controlled Raku Navi GPS units. With the infrared-powered Air Gesture feature, drivers can wave their hand in front of a device to pull up a menu with commands such as setting their home or a personal haunt as a destination or skipping to the next tune on a playlist. Once a hand is retracted, the menu will be replaced with the usual map interface. Though the solution isn't completely hands-free, horizontal hand waves can be assigned one of ten different functions. Japanese store shelves will be lined with two dashboard-embeddable units by mid-October, while four console-independent models will join them in early November. As of now, there's no word if the hardware will make the pilgrimage stateside.
Woven's wearable platform for gaming, cool points and a whole lot more (video)
TshirtOS showed us one take on wearable gadgetry earlier this month, and now it's Woven's turn. This particular e-garment packs quite the selection of hardware, as you can see above -- a trio of LilyPad Arduino boards (and some custom ones), a Bluetooth module, 12 x 12 RGB LED "screen", speakers, bend sensors, a heart rate monitor, shake motors and a power pack. You'll need to accessorize, of course, with a smartphone for hardware harmony and to run companion apps. So what's it for, you ask? Well, the creators are touting it primarily as a "pervasive" gaming platform, and even seem to have a working first title in the form of SPOOKY (think gesture-based ghost-fighting). Other uses (which appear a little more conceptual) see Woven as a workout companion, TV remote, Wii controller, social network alerter or simply a fashion accessory. Check out the videos below to see it in action and imagine all the fun you could have in the five minutes before you're ushered into that padded room.
Leap Motion gesture control technology hands-on
Leap Motion unveiled its new gesture control technology earlier this week, along with videos showing the system tracking ten fingers with ease and a single digit slicing and dicing a grocery store's worth of produce in Fruit Ninja. Still, doubts persisted as to the veracity of the claim that the Leap is 200 times more accurate than existing tech. So, we decided to head up to San Francisco to talk with the men behind Leap, David Holz and Michael Buckwald, and see it for ourselves. Join us after the break to learn a bit more about Leap, our impressions of the technology, and a video of the thing in action.%Gallery-156126%
Leap Motion reveals super-accurate motion control tech, $70 device to change the UI game
In many respects, Microsoft has led the charge towards a future of gesture-based controls with its Kinect, and other tech giants like Samsung and Apple are getting in on the action, too. The move to motion controls isn't limited to the big boys, however. Leap Motion has created a new device, called the Leap, it claims is 200 times more accurate than existing technology and will take gesture controls to the next level. It's about the size of a pack of gum, and once connected to your computer via USB, it creates a eight-cubic-foot virtual workspace. Within that area, it tracks all ten of your fingers simultaneously to within 1/100 of a millimeter -- that level of accuracy allows for rudimentary gestures like pinch-to-zoom and more complex actions like manipulating 3D-rendered objects. Naturally, the company isn't telling much about the black magic making it happen, but Leap Motion claims that its software can be embedded in almost anything with an onboard computer, from phones to refrigerators. Users can customize it to suit their needs with custom gestures and sensitivity settings, in addition to chaining multiple Leap devices together to create a larger workspace. Plus, Leap Motion has created an SDK for devs to create Leap-compatible applications and an app discovery platform to distribute them to others. That means the Leap can work in a variety of use cases, from simply navigating your desktop to gaming and computer-aided design. The best part? Leap brings you this next-gen UX for a mere $69.99, and a select few can pre-order them now, with the full roll-out coming this winter. Full details follow in the PR below, and you can see the Leap in action in the videos after the break.
Sony VAIO E Series 14P gets Ivy Bridge processor nudge, improved display
While they may not be the Sony ultrabooks we're still all itching to see, the company's E Series 14P laptops have reappeared with some Ivy Bridge bones. According to Sony Australia, the previously Intel Core i3 processor has been bulked up to a third-generation 2.1GHz Core i7-3612QM, capable of 3.1GHz with Turbo Boost. That's not the only difference, with the 14-inch display boosted to 1600 x 900 and a new choice between AMD'S Radeon HD 7670M or Intel's HD Graphics 4000 to provide the graphical horse power in the updated hardware. The aluminum-splashed laptops, priced at $1,500 AUD (around $1,608 USD), will still house Sony's Gesture Control functions. This should allow you to navigate around websites and media playback with some arm flailing -- provided you're using Microsoft perennials like Internet Explorer 9 and Windows Media Player. These updated specs are tinged with some (minor) bad news; it looks like the pink iteration won't be getting the same improvements seen on the black and white models. Regardless, monochrome fans can hit up the source for all the new details.
Sony unveils E Series 14P laptops with gesture-based controls
They may not be the thinnest or most powerful machines Sony's ever introduced, but the new trio hopes to catch a few hearts here and there. A follow-up to those flashy VAIOs we saw a while back, these E Series models are each packing a 14-inch, 1366 x 768 display, an Intel Core i3 2550M CPU with 4GB of RAM and your choice of AMD Radeon HD 7670M or Intel HD Graphics 3000 -- all while promising up to seven hours of battery life. Run-of-the-mill specs aside, Sony's Gesture Control feature will allow you to swipe between pages and adjust bits like music playback -- though, at the moment it only works with Windows Media Player, IE9, PowerPoint and PowerDVD. The company's yet to reveal the 14P's price tag, but in the meantime you can decide which color best suits you by checking out the gallery below.
Angry Birds given gesture controls in tech demo
Developer SoftKinetic specializes in gesture recognition technology, and has put that technology to use in the headliniest of ways: Angry Birds. Using the iisu middleware, which allows 3D gesture recognition to be added to any application (if a special camera is present, of course), Softkinetic put together a tech demo of Angry Birds with gesture controls.It's incredibly intuitive -- if possible, it's even more intuitive than the touchscreen controls in the mobile versions. Basically, you just grab the bird between two fingers, pull back, and let go to throw.Now, we wonder what kind of gestures other mobile devs can think of for Angry Birds.
Project MGS table reads your iPhone's media, gets you hands-on (video)
We know what you're thinking -- an iPhone interfacing with a Surface? The gods must be crazy. Well, it isn't and they're not, so relax. This custom-built, multitouch table of Apple interactivity comes from Computer Science undergrads Artem Vovk and Shuo Yang at the Technische Universität Darmstadt in Germany. Aptly titled Project MGS (Media Gathering System), the system enables wireless transfer of your iPhone's media to the infrared camera-equipped tabletop for some Java-based, gesture controlling fun. How does it know the phone's on there? Simple -- the table locates a barcode affixed to the back of your device and, after that, it's just you and all the pinch-zooming, media-playing mayhem you can muster up. The project also supports file transfers between iOS devices, a feature destined for display in future videos. For now, the tech only plays nice with Apple-flavored mobile devices, but the pair promises it can easily make way for future Android connectivity. Hit the break for the full demonstration and its folksy backing track. [Thanks, Shuo]
Evoluce announces 46-inch display with built-in 3D sensors
We've already seen Evoluce toy around with Kinect hacks and multitouch displays, and it's now inevitably managed to combine the two. The company has just announced its new I-Voluce display, which fuses a standard 46-inch LCD with some integrated "3D depth sensing technology" that's apparently not simply a repurposed Kinect -- exact details on it are light, but it will apparently work from a distance of up to 13 feet, and it relies on Windows 7 for an OS. That's obviously not designed for home use, but Evoluce does see plenty of potential for the displays in public spaces like museums, as well as in office and education environments. For those that prefer a more hands-on approach, Evoluce also has an updated version of its Surface-style multitouch table, the Evoluce Two, which also packs 3D depth sensing technology and can accommodate up to six users simultaneously. Of course, neither exactly come cheap -- look for prices to start at €3,995, or about $5,600.
Apple patent application opens the door to free-form acoustic gesture commands
Another Apple patent application has come to light that's making us stop the daily grind for a moment and ponder the possibilities. This one talks about scattering a bunch of acoustic transducers (basically, microphones) throughout the case of a laptop. No, they aren't there to pick up the sweet sounds of your humming along with Rihanna and, while the application doesn't make it perfectly clear what their purpose is for, we're liking Patently Apple's conclusion that this is to enable acoustic commands. The application describes a microprocessor that can "interpret electrical signals generated by the one or more acoustic transducers as input." The idea is that these transducers detect a finger making contact with the chassis and register those vibrations as gestures. A similar concept is demonstrated in a video below, so watch that then start dreaming. Dragging your finger along the bezel to scroll? A non-capacitive touchpad as wide as the keyboard? Music games that finally let you show off your finger drumming prowess?
