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Minority Report UI For The Military

Posted by Zonk on from the at-least-some-good-will-come-from-that-movie dept.

merryprankster writes "New Scientist is reporting that a 'Minority Report' style interface is being developed by defense company Raytheon. Users don a pair of reflective gloves and manipulate images projected on a panoramic screen. A mounted camera keeps track of hand movements and a computer interprets gestures. Raytheon has even employed John Underkoffler, the researcher who proposed the interface to the makers of the film. Now just wait till Billboards start scanning your iris."

3 of 227 comments (clear)

  1. I'm Impressed by Effugas · · Score: 4, Interesting

    In tech, we often find ourselves referring to the Hollywood Operating System. You know, the one where every key press makes a "click" sound, and passwords are cracked one character at a time (admittedly, something that actually worked against Windows 9x file shares).

    I was actually impressed with the UI in Minority Report. I'm not saying it was necessarily perfect, but it wasn't obviously ridiculous either. There is a need to monitor information flows across many different sources, to simultaneously sense them, and to have the ability to integrate on demand. A large display with linkable data nodes is one approach that deserves further analysis.

  2. Interface by sbillard · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Push/Pull
    Slide/Spin/Twist
    Grab/Grip/Grok/Associate
    Wipe/Toss
    ...So many more distinct gestures/commands are possilbe.
    I read a lot of Phillip K Dick and the interface portrayed in Minority Report was wonderfull.... not the goop-pool..... I'm refering to the the big screen Tom Cruise manipulated.... the goop-pool interface is the opposite extreme.
    Nice story...original author highly recommended.

    it makes me wonder. Which side are you on?

    Hoppy Harrington says "Hi"gher

  3. Re:Wow - this technology is so new.... by plover · · Score: 4, Interesting
    Well, if you had position and orientation for each fingertip pad, there'd pretty much be only one position the hand could be in to achieve it. The rest of the parts of the fingers and hand could be interpolated.

    Try an experiment: fix your wrist, then position your fingertips in any configuration. Now, try moving any of your hand or finger bones while keeping the fingertips in the exact same position and orientation. It's very difficult, and you probably can't move those other bones too far.

    Besides, it would be very rare indeed if the orientation of the second and third knuckles independent of the fingertips would be relevant to the task being performed. And even if that were true, trying that experiment shows me the interpolated position probably wouldn't vary by more than a few degrees at most.

    Getting back to data gloves in general, I always thought the real data glove from many years ago was a clever piece of engineering. The one I remember seeing had an IR transceiver mounted on one side of each joint, and the IR beam was interrupted by variable width "vanes" affixed to the other side of each joint. The degree of flex was correlated to the amount of IR that was passed through the isolator. No moving or rotating parts to wear out (except for the glove,) and no friction for the user.

    --
    John