"Body Talk" Could Control Gadgets

Fragglebabe writes "The BBC reports that we could soon be controlling our gadgets using small movements of the body, such as a nod of the head. In order to make this possible, 'Audio cloud' technology has been developed by researchers at the University of Glasgow. They say that 'audio clouds could make using mobile devices on the move safer and easier'. According to the article, 'the researchers have developed ways to control gadgets, such as personal digital assistants (PDAs) and music players, using 3D sound for output and gestures for input.'"

Comments

I'm telling you, boss, ...

[RyoSaeba]

... that nasty, inflammatory mail towards i appear to have sent is the result of my coughing! The mail reader thought i was composing a mail!

Could be useful if done right

[janek78]

Sure this could be useful, I can see some great uses for disabled people (e.g. it could make using certain devices easier for people who lost their finger(s)).

"The whole thing is about trying to make it more natural and using the right way to control something at the right time."

I think this paragraph sums it up nicely. I always fear these smart phones (PDAs, gadgets or even PCs), because once they start guessing what you want them to do it's fine 95% of the time when they get it right. But those 5% can become a real nightmare (if they take away some low level control from you).

Could be also a bit hard to use for old people with hand tremor (or Parkinson's disease). But I guess you can filter this low amnplitude tremor out (wasn't there an article about a smooth mouse on /. recently?).

So I say yes, but please give me a full backup option to control my /insert a favorite gadget here/.

Wow.

[Yeldarb-7]

controlling our gadgets using small movements of the body

Can you imagine, what if you could control a device by simply touching it with our finger? We could call it a "button."

Douglas Adams foresaw it

[thbb]

The machine was rather difficult to operate. For years, radios had been operated by means of pressing buttons and turning dials; then, as the technology became more sophisticated, the controls were made touch sensitive ... now all you had to do was wave your hand in the general direction of the components and hope. It saved a lot of muscular expenditure of course, but meant you had to stay infuriatingly still if you wanted to keep listening to the same programme.

D. Adams, 1979 The hitchhiker's guide to the galaxy. chapter 12, first paragraph.

See also: Charade: remote control of objects using free hand gestures (1993)

Tension conveys intention

[thbb]

Back in 1993, with a dataglove (video recognition could not be used at the time), I spent some time assessing the conditions by which one could use this type of interaction. We came up with three recommendations for gesture-based interaction vocabularies:

• Creation of an active zone to distinguish gestures addressed to the system from other gestures.
• Recognition of dynamic gestures to ensure smooth command input.
• Use of hand tension at the start of gestural commands to structure the interaction.

This last one is key: tense gestures (just as tension in the voice) carry the fact you really want something done, and thus disambiguates your gestures.

More at: Charade: remote control of objects using free hand gestures

Showing my age, but...

[DiamondGeezer]

Folks,

we've been hearing about control of gadgets, faucets and light bulbs using heat, remote control, computer control, nodding, winking, clapping, voice control and other electronic marvels for as long as I can remember (ie the mid 1970s).

Yet, we're still using light switches whose fundamental design hasn't changed since Edison. We still have doors that open or close (instead of slide to one side a la "Star Trek") manually using something we old-timers call a "door handle". We still open a faucet which is entirely mechanical in design.

Face it, these hyped-up-but-never-deployed electronic marvels are poor quality alternatives to straightforward mechanical design, and always liable to go wrong (especially during a power-outage).

We'll still be using the same stuff in fifty years - just get over it. There are more compelling uses for technology than these solutions-for-problems-that-don't-require-solution s.