gesture
Latest
Alps Electric integrates motion sensors and eye detection into vehicle cockpit of the future (video)
Residing in hall space a fair distance away from the likes of the Toyota and Sony, the automotive division of Alps Electric was demonstrating a forward-looking vehicle interface at CEATEC 2012. Connecting together the company's existing capacitive touch technology with motion sensors and eye movement cameras, the system centers on the multimodal commander -- that mysterious-looking orb located below the gear stick. Navigation through it can be done through waving your hand over the device, swiping or rotating the orb like a dial. This can then move through weather, music and map programs, which are all integrated into the car's touchscreen, while an overhanging motion sensor will also detect where your hand is headed. An Alps spokesman said that this means the system can try to predict your intentions, adjusting the UI before you reach for the controls. We've got a hands-on video from pretty busy showroom -- and more impressions -- after the break.
Chrome experiment explores new types of navigation, degrees of embarrassment
What you're about to see, should you choose to click the source link below, is far from perfect. On the other hand, it's clearly had a lot of effort and expertise put into it -- not only by HTML5-savvy coders, but also by a troupe of performers from the Cirque du Soleil. It's called Movi.Kanti.Revo, which is a fancy way of saying Move.Sing.Dream, and it involves navigating through an ethereal and slightly laggy landscape using only swaying gestures, your singing voice (mournful sobbing sounds also worked for us) and a bunch of APIs that conveniently fail to work on FireFox, Safari or Internet Explorer. It's well-suited to those with a mic and webcam, preferably sitting in a open-plan and bully-ridden workplace, and if you don't like it there's always Bastion.
Zorro Macsk review: instantly add touchscreen functionality to your 21.5-inch iMac
Over the years we've come across a few signs that pointed to the possibility of touchscreen-enabled iMacs, but Steve Jobs had already dismissed this as a possibility for current Mac form factors. Quoting the man at the "Back to the Mac" keynote from two years ago: "It gives great demo, but after a while your arm feels like it's going to fall off. Touch surfaces want to be horizontal." So perhaps our fantasy's still stuck in the "research project" phase. Luckily, the more adventurous touchscreen lovers can look to third-party solutions. For MacBooks you have Axiotron's Modbook, except you lose the keyboard and you can't perform the modification yourself. As for iMacs and Cinema Displays, we've been following Troll Touch for its resistive touchscreen replacement panels, but they aren't exactly affordable and most of them have to be installed by the company. Even its user-installable SlipCover series starts from $899, anyway. This leaves us with the Zorro Macsk, a cheekily named iMac accessory hailing from TMDtouch of Shenzhen, China. The 21.5-inch model is priced at just $199 on Amazon with no modifications required. Plus, it supports multitouch -- a glaring omission from Troll Touch's Mac lineup. So is this truly a bargain? Or is it just a case of "you get what you pay for?" Follow past the break to see how we got on with the Zorro Macsk.%Gallery-165013%
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.
Google grabs glove-based input patent, could spell out gesture control
Google might have already patented some nifty eye-tracking controls, but that doesn't mean it isn't considering other sensory input. A recently granted patent hints at a potential glove-based controller, with references to a pair of detectors that record "images" of an environment, and then determine gestures based on the calculated movement between them. The illustrations go on to show a hand drawing out the letter J, indicating it could be used for text input, while another suggests recognition of pinch-to-zoom style gestures. There's no mention of its fancy glasses in the patent, but we're thinking a glove to control the Nexus 7 might be a bit overkill.
Qualcomm demos touch-free gesture control for tablets powered by Snapdragon (video)
Tablets are for touching -- that much is understood. But Qualcomm's making it so your fingers will be mostly optional, thanks to the Kinect-like powers of its Snapdragon CPU. To highlight this, the company's uploaded a couple of videos to its YouTube channel that showcase two practical use case scenarios for the gesture tech: gaming and cooking. Using the device's front-facing camera, users will one day soon be able to control onscreen avatars, page forward and back through recipes, setup profiles and even wake their slates all with simple hand or head movements. Alright, so tactile-free navigation of this sort isn't exactly new, but it does up open up the tablet category to a whole new world of innovation. Head past the break to peek the demos in action.
Kinect Toolbox update turns hand gestures into mouse input, physical contact into distant memory
Using Microsoft's Kinect to replace a mouse is often considered the Holy Grail of developers; there have been hacks and other tricks to get it working well before Kinect for Windows was even an option. A lead Technical Evangelist for Microsoft in France, David Catuhe, has just provided a less makeshift approach. The 1.2 update to his Kinect Toolbox side project introduces hooks to control the mouse outright, including 'magnetic' control to draw the mouse from its original position. To help keep the newly fashioned input (among other gestures) under control, Catuhe has also taken advantage of the SDK 1.5 release to check that the would-be hand-waver is sitting and staring at the Kinect before accepting any input. The open-source Windows software is available to grab for experimentation today, so if you think hands-free belongs as much on the PC desktop as in a car, you now have a ready-made way to make the dream a reality... at least, until you have to type.
Microsoft details the Touch Mouse's upcoming support for Windows 8 gestures
We already knew that Microsoft would be upgrading its Touch Mouse to support Windows 8 gestures, but the outfit never confirmed which finger movements, exactly, would be built in. Now, Redmond is explaining it all, even though the mouse won't actually get updated until Win8 goes on sale in late October. According to the company, you'll be able to swipe two fingers to the right to toggle between open programs, and two to the left to expose those Charms. Sliding three fingers up and down will allow you to use Semantic Zoom. (Naturally, you'll be able to swipe from side to side to move through the tiles on your Start screen, but you probably already guessed that.) We have a Touch Mouse here at Engadget HQ that we're just itching to update, but until those drivers drop three months from now, it seems we'll just have to find something else to keep us entertained.
Angry Birds land on Samsung Smart TVs, wage war with gestures
If your contempt for green swine runs deeper then you can express on a smartphone, maybe its time you took the war to something bigger. How about a Samsung Smart TV? According to the firm's Flickr page, Rovio's Angry Birds are once again taking their war to your living room, and will be utilizing the platform's motion control features. Sounds like Sammy's Smart Interaction setup is good for a bit more than changing channels and browsing the web from your couch. Don't own a Smart TV? Sit tight, your Xbox and its fancy Kinect sensor will have their day on the battlefield soon enough.
University of Calgary experimenting with one-handed iPhone gestures
A research team from the GroupLab at the University of Calgary is working on a set of new single-handed gestures for the iPhone called the the Fat Thumb interaction technique. This technique lets you hold your iPhone with one hand and use your thumb to interact with the UI. The team conducted a trial that challenged users to pan and zoom to a location on a map and the Fat Thumb interaction technique performed as well as other commonly-used multi-fingered techniques. You can read more about the gestures in the group's 10-page PDF research paper and watch a video of the technique in action on the GroupLab website. [Via Engadget]
University of Calgary's Fat Thumb trick allows one-handed phone use, jugglers are thankful (video)
Everyone's let it happen at some point -- that moment where we're desperately trying to use our smartphones in one hand while juggling groceries or coffee in the other. There'll be no way to recover those social graces, but six researchers at the University of Calgary have developed a software technique, Fat Thumb, that should at least keep the contortions and dropped phones to a minimum. As the name implies, it's all based around pressure: a light touch performs the usual commands, while squishing the thumb's wider surface area against the screen allows the equivalent of a multi-touch gesture, such as a pinch to zoom. The advantages for comfort and grip virtually speak for themselves; what's surprising is that Fat Thumb may well be faster than other one-handed gestures. Work on the project is so far confined to a research paper stemming from experiments with an iPhone, although it's easy to see this spreading to other platforms and real products before too long. Catch a glimpse of the cleverness in action after the break.
Microsoft job posting hints at Connected Car strategy: Azure, Kinect and WP8
Redmond seems to have more grandiose ideas for Connected Car than it's let on before, judging from a recent help wanted ad on its site. Reading more like PR for its car-based plans, the job notice waxes poetically about using "the full power of the Microsoft ecosystem" in an upcoming auto platform with tech such as Kinect, Azure, Windows 8 and Windows Phone. Those products would use face-tracking, speech and gestures to learn your driving habits and safely guide or entertain you on the road, according to the software engineer listing. It also hints that everything would be tied together using Azure's cloud platform, so that your favorite music or shortcuts would follow you around, even if you're not piloting your own rig. All that makes its original Connected Car plans from 2009 seem a bit laughable -- check the original video for yourself after the break.
Microsoft applies to patent gesture-based MIDI interface, turn us all into Jean Michel Jarre
Microsoft has applied to patent a free-space gesture controller for a MIDI interface that could see you kicking out jams on invisible instruments. Using a Kinect-style depth camera, individual movements would be mapped to notes and played out by the games console observing the action. The company actually teased a similar function in its Kinect Effect advert, where it showed cellists, violinists and pianists all miming in front of the sensor, although we doubt the technology is at a sufficiently capable stage just yet. If granted, it means we could see plenty of intentional arm-waving in future music games, or an even more outrageous stage show from the world's most beloved Gallic synth maven.
Microsoft will roll out Kinect-enabled NUads on Xbox 360 this fall (video)
Microsoft's Xbox Live Advertising team first showed off its highly interactive NUads platform at the Cannes festival last year, and today announced they will start rolling out to Xbox 360s this fall. The first advertisers up are Toyota, Unilever and Samsung Mobile USA with Kinect-enabled ads that let viewers respond to questions after a 30-second spot by voice or gesture. According to Microsoft this is great because viewers can easily see real time stats of how others are voting and advertisers get immediate feedback. While we've all wanted to shout down an ad at some point (just look out the window Zooey, seriously) there's probably going to be a contingent that thinks letting advertisers accumulate data from behind that Kinect camera lens is a little creepier than they'd like. Check out Microsoft's pitch for the tech in press release and video form after the break.
Apple unveils vew version of Safari that syncs tabs, supports gestures
During its presentation on OS X Mountain Lion, Apple unveiled a new version of Safari that'll improve your desktop browsing experience. The new Safari will have the "fastest javascript engine of any browser on the planet" and "lightning fast page loading," said Craig Federighi during the WWDC keynote. A new scrolling architecture based on Core Animation will deliver smooth-as-silk scrolling. Besides improving the rendering engine, Safari will have a new tab syncing feature that'll show you all the pages you have open across all devices. Apple also added several multitouch gestures (swipe and pinch/zoom) that'll let you move between tabs. And it that isn't enough, there's also a very Chrome-ish smart search field that'll let you search right in your browser address bar.
Ben Heck makes Super Glove mod for Kinect, takes strain out of gestures (video)
Sick of trying to control your 360 using Kinect, semaphore and advanced flailing? Modgod Ben Heck, deciding he wanted to be more Minority Report and less lunatic, has been working on Power Glove 2.0 to improve the console's navigation experience. The prototype glove is tricked out with Arduino, an accelerometer, a gyroscope and some fingertip buttons. With the addition of IR and a little coding magic, the 360's interface can be controlled via subtle gestures, with increased functionality / style points also apparent. Check out the latest episode of The Ben Heck Show after the break for a detailed walkthrough of the project and a demo of the glove in action.
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%
Hillcrest Labs takes its TV motion control system to China, becomes TCL's new best friend
It's only been a few days since Hillcrest Labs open sourced its Kylo web browser for TVs, and now the company's back with yet another announcement. Well, this time it's more about TCL who's just declared its top TV market share in China. Much like the Roku 2 and LG TVs with Magic Motion remote, Hillcrest's Freespace engine has been outted as the enabling technology behind TCL's recently announced V7500, a 3D smart TV series featuring a heavily customized Android 4.0.3 and a 7.9mm-thick bezel. This means users can interact with and play games on this slim TV via motion and cursor control on the remote (there's also voice control here but it doesn't look like Hillcrest has anything to do with it). There are no dates or prices just yet, but TCL better be quick as Lenovo's got something very similar ready to ship soon.
Google patent application could give Project Glass one true ring controller to rule them all
Let's face it: right now, the head nods and other rudimentary controls of Google's Project Glass are mostly useful for looking good, sharing photos and not much else. A US patent application submitted last September and just now published, however, raises the possibility of more sophisticated control coming from your hands. A ring, a bracelet or a even a fake fingernail with an infrared-reflective layer would serve as a gesture control marker for a receiver on heads-up display glasses. Having this extra control would give the glasses-mounted computing room to grow by learning gestures, and it could even depend on multiple ornaments for more sophisticated commands -- at least, if you don't mind looking like a very nerdy Liberace. We can imagine the headaches a hand-based method might cause for very enthusiastic talkers, among other possible hiccups, so don't be surprised if Project Glass goes without any kind of ring input. That said, we suspect that Sauron would approve.
Sign language translator turns gestures into spoken letters, makes for a better world (video)
By far one of the greatest challenges of sign language has been to translate it for everyday folk that wouldn't know where to begin a conversation with the deaf. Cornell University engineering students Ranjay Krishna, Seonwoo Lee and Si Ping Wang -- along with some help from Jonathan Lang -- used their final project time this past semester to close this gap in one of the more practical solutions we've seen to date. Their prototype glove uses accelerometers, contact sensors and flex sensors to translate complex finger gestures from the American Sign Language alphabet into spoken letters: after converting hand positions to digital signals, the test unit both speaks out the resulting letters and sends them to a computer, where they can be used for anything from a game (shown in the video below) to, presumably, constructing whole sentences. Along with being accurate, the Cornell work is even designed with a mind towards how it would work in the real world, as the glove and its transmitter are both wireless and powered by 9-volt batteries. We hope that the project leads to a real product and an extra bridge between the deaf and the rest of us, but in the meantime, we'll be happy that at least one form of powered glove is being put to the noblest use possible.
