Data Glove That Turns Gestures Into Commands

ravidew writes: "Three students at Berkeley Sensor and Actuator Center, University of California, have built a motion-sensing glove that can transmit hand gestures to a PC. Within 3 years they hope to build sensors that are no bigger than 1mm and can be glued to each fingernail. Now you can really tell Windows what you think ..." While you're at the Sensor and Actuator Center, check out Kris Pister's smart dust.

Comments

Great keyboard replacement for handhelds

[jwkane]

Think about it. You have these sensors in each of your fingertips and any flat surface becomes an instant full-size keyboard.

It also one-ups the mouse-keyboard combination, no more mouse/touchpad. Just lift your forefinger off the virtual keyboard and move the mouse pointer by pointing at the screen. Your fingers never have to leave the home-row.

For those that can't touch-type, unroll a cheat-sheet and type on it.

This will be a GREAT technology once it matures.

Re:The future of user input

[Squeeze Truck]

English has so much fluff that is unnescessary when communicating with a machine - "Hello Computer, please open my email client and show me new emails for today" might be fun the first time, but doing it every day would rapidly grow tiresome.

I agree. English as a language is too ambiguous for computer use. And the way Americans (like myself) speak it makes it even worse as American English is fraught with homonyms.

I know it will never be tried, but classical Latin would be far better for computer input, as it is the least ambiguous language I am aware of.

Back on the subject of gesture input though, I think the Chinese will be able to put this technology to practical use sooner than anyone else. I count at least half a dozen fully-mature products from Hong Kong and Taiwan (I use Power Pen) that use a wacom pad to enter Chinese and English (and Japanese) language text into Windows PC's. With Power Pen, you can use the stylus as the only interface to the PC.

The neat thing about Chinese is, if you draw the characters with the proper stroke order, you can enter entire sentences on the fly without lifting your pen.

So if the glove mentioned could be rigged to run Power Pen, or something like it, so one could just write characters on the desk with their fingers, a Chinese person could use it as the only interface to their PC pretty much immediately.