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Minority Report UI For The Military
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."
i wonder what viewing porn will be like with these new gloves.
When will it carve wooden balls?
I thought it was going to be an interface consisting of three psychic kids in tanks making all your decisions before you. That would be much more useful.
It has been being done for years by the film and video industry, albeit mainly not in realtime, but such places as the Liberty Science Center had interactive games that used contrasting colors to determine what the player was doing [they had basketball for sometime where you wore either a chroma-blue or chroma-green glove]
Video Production Support
Raytheon is more than a defence contractor. They make alot of commercial electronics, including alot of marine equipment such as radar and radios.
The advantage of using gloves is not to get a more intuitive, 3-D version of the mouse. The advantage to gloves is that you can have more than one (or two) pointers on a screen. Imagine using photoshop or some other editing software, and, instead of having to mouse around or hit keys to change tools, you just contracted a different finger. Touch typing is much faster than hunt-and-peck; why shouldn't the same be the case for graphical interfaces?
.. where to copy a file from one side of the room to the other, they essentially use a ***giant floppy disk***? Sure, it was a cool floppy disk, with live action video playing on it, but still... its a floppy disk.
You'd have thunk that by the time they had perfected 3D holography and VR manipulation, they could at least have kept up with some high-capacity networking. I guess not - floppys are the future!
Tomorrow's news today: Microsoft invites bloggers with high readership to dinner. Shows them previews of Minority Report style interface. Bloggers write gushing reports about it.
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.
Then you better try the Apple solution: it will only come with one glove.
There is a reason none of these VR interfaces never go anywhere. The human body is not designed to hold it's arms suspended in mid-air for extende dperiods of time.
Try it yourself - stick your hands in front of the monitor, a bit below level with your shoulders. Feel free to move them around as if you are "manipulating".
Now, see how long you can hold them up there before your shoulders give out.
Now compare that to how long you can use a keyboard and mouse in one session.
It is not even in the same ballpark.
I wonder what congressional district the defense company is located in?
Raytheon has facilities in almost every state. They merged with Hughes a while back, and manufacture a wide variety of defense equipment, especially in the aerospace sector.
And where in the field will this be used?
The article says, in the field of satellite reconnaissance imagery. It'd be like using a mouse, except you can move more than one screen object at once with the fluidity of every day hand motions. Far more efficient.
Am I the only one who gets scared when I imagine what a room in the pentagon might look like, with Generals wearing special glasses, and moving projected data off walls?
Probably. Most men are made of sterner stuff.
Push/Pull
...So many more distinct gestures/commands are possilbe.
Slide/Spin/Twist
Grab/Grip/Grok/Associate
Wipe/Toss
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
Someone probably said the same thing about ARPANET.
I wonder what congressional district the defense company is located in?
Edward J. Markey (Ranking Democrat on the Telecommunications and Internet subcommittee)
Raytheon is based in Waltham, Massachussetts, but they have offices everywhere. Canada, Japan, Oz...
And they are Linux friendly.
And where in the field will this be used?
One use might be a virtual sand table. Not everything the military does is 'in the field'.
Am I the only one who gets scared when I imagine what a room in the pentagon might look like, with Generals wearing special glasses, and moving projected data off walls?
Probably.
Generals don't move data. They direct Col's and Majors to do that.
the Apple solution: it will only come with one glove.
Correction: a mitten.
-- Alastair
The one that gives you a blowjob while you code?
As other posters have pointed out, it would be difficult to hold your arms up for extended periods. However, if paired with good voice recognition imagine mostly talking with occasionally moving/adjusting objects.
Shh.