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Multitouch Without Touch Using Wiimote

Posted by ScuttleMonkey on from the right-touch dept.

owlgorithm writes to mention that Gizmodo has a neat hack for the multitouch Holy Grail — multitouch without the touch. This hack turns the Wiimote into a receiver for IR light reflected from an emitter off of your fingers using reflective tape.

21 of 94 comments (clear)

  1. Who would have thought... by Digitus1337 · · Score: 2, Interesting

    That we'd get our first glimpse of those cool minority report interfaces from a game console. I always figured it would be thanks to porn.

  2. Power Glove redeaux? by Cerberus7 · · Score: 3, Funny

    (oblig.) I love the Power Glove. It's so bad.

    This could be really awesome. I can see this as a great way to bring good strategy games to consoles. It might even be better than a mouse. Supreme Commander with your fingers on a Wii? Nevermind that the Wii would gag on the graphics load, but the gameplay is intriguing.

    --
    I don't know about you, but my servers run on the power of cotton candy and happy thoughts. -Anonymous Coward
  3. Good Point by blhack · · Score: 4, Insightful

    At the end he makes a very good point. Your arms get tired after a while. As cool as the interface in minority report might be....it isn't very practical. Keyboard and mouse interfaces have lasted for so long because they are VERY VERY good....a mouse is a perfect way of interacting with your monitor...you're using a 2d surface to interface with another 2d surface (not to mention the fact that you can let go of a mouse, and it stays in the same place....unlike a wacom tablet, or this thing). If we ever get to a point where monitors truly are 3d (which seems rather pointless to me, albeit cool)...then something like this MIGHT make sense....that is if you tracked it in all 3 dimensions.

    --
    NewslilySocial News. No lolcats allowed.
    1. Re:Good Point by Gibble · · Score: 4, Funny

      Heaven forbid any of us geeks build up some arm strength by doing more than pushing a mouse around!

      --
      Gibble: Descriptive of an emotional state in which one's mind is scrabbling for some purchase on reality
    2. Re:Good Point by LiquidCoooled · · Score: 5, Insightful

      I can see this owrking really nicely with a glass table.
      Who says you have to aim at the tv?
      It might work coming to the actual glass surface which means you could lay your arm down and rest it like a mouse but you have the third dimension when you need it.

      --
      liqbase :: faster than paper
    3. Re:Good Point by CastrTroy · · Score: 2, Interesting

      I don't think that something like this would take over as the standard form of input, however, it could be useful for doing things like presentations. Imagine if you were in a small meeting, with about 5 people, and each one had a wiimote, and each one was able to draw things on the screen. Somebody watching a presentation could point the wiimote at a diagram to show everyone exactly what part he was asking a question about. Just because it isn't the best solution in all cases, doesn't mean it's can't be a good solution for some cases. And considering that wiimotes are quite cheap, it could work out as a very good solution.

      --

      Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
    4. Re:Good Point by Tom · · Score: 4, Interesting

      You haven't seen Jeff Han's talk.

      --
      Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
    5. Re:Good Point by The+FNP · · Score: 3, Insightful

      When I was in boot camp, sometimes they would punish us by making us hold a pencil. We had to hold it with both arms held straight out. We were young kids in pretty decent shape and it didn't take long at all for it to get pretty painful. Just the weight of holding up your arms can get to be too much after a while. If they had you hold your arms out to the sides instead of out in front, it would have had another name: Crucifixion. Anything done long enough can be painful.

      I'd be very glad to see an actual game or product along these lines as it would introduce more exercise into the lives of the users. A really simple product that would work well with this would be in fast food. instead of having the workers touch a button with their gloves or hands, they just select the option they want in the air. And tell me, what is the difference between mashing the little tiny buttons on a fast food register, and using a system like this. (I haven't worked fast food, so if you know tell me) --The FNP

  4. Everyone loves writing software... plus the Vicon by compumike · · Score: 3, Interesting

    But software will only take you so far. There's a lot of unique PC to human interactions that are possible, but this world needs more hardware hackers.

    In any case, this is a neat demo. People have been doing this on a much bigger, 3D, expensive $$$ scale with something called a Vicon Motion Capture System. They basically take a whole bunch of those cameras, and a whole bunch of LED arrays, and strobe them so that they get a picture of little reflective points from many different angles. They then use some trigonometry to figure out where, in 3D space, a particular point is. Cool stuff -- good to see it's being brought closer to everyone's homes, rather than the tens of thousands of dollars that Vicon charges.

    --
    Educational microcontroller kits for the digital generation.

  5. nerds at four o'clock!! (ok, slightly after...) by xeno · · Score: 4, Funny

    ok, i appreciate the true geekitude of taping your fingers with reflective stuff to air-type, but editing the video to 4:04 is just over the top nerdiness.

    damn.

    --
    I think not...(*poof*)
  6. Re:Supply will increase massively soon by stoolpigeon · · Score: 3, Informative

    In this Mercury News interview with Reggie Fils-Aime he pretty much gaurantees that they still wont meet demand for the holidays. Here's the nugget:

    We're working very hard to make sure that consumers are satisfied this holiday, but I can't guarantee that we're going to meet demand. As a matter of fact, I can tell you on the record we won't.

    I guess I'm going to have to start trolling target, walmart and such on a regular basis.

    --
    It's hard to believe that's how Micronians are made. Why don't we see it right now by having you both kiss one another?
  7. You know what they say... by monkeyboythom · · Score: 3, Funny

    No glove...no love.

  8. YouTube Link by Digitus1337 · · Score: 3, Informative

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0awjPUkBXOU

  9. "Holy Grail" is pretty old tech already by bobbaddeley · · Score: 5, Interesting

    The "Holy Grail" of multitouch without the touch is a pretty old problem. I've been working on something at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory for a while called the HI-Space table, and it was around before I came to the lab. It uses infrared and a camera and detects multiple inputs simultaneously, as well as object placed on the table. It doesn't require touching at all and works fairly well, detecting not only single fingers but each of the fingers, allowing the user to do different things with different arrangements of fingers. It understands motions as well, and can detect a swipe, circle, etc. Objects aren't tagged with anything special; they're just cardboard shapes.

    Here's a video of the HI-Space table in action: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nFBoq1i81V4

    Here's an old link to some of the work: http://infoviz.pnl.gov/hces/

  10. Stuck in our past. by bigattichouse · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Seems to me we always seem to be building technology to make old ideas into a reality. I've always felt that all these hands-free interface ideas look like wizards waving their hands around in the air. If they had eye-glass headsup displays, they'd look like they're casting spells or something.

    Its not that it is indistinguishable from magic, its that were TRYING to make it look like that.

    Just a thought.

    --
    meh
  11. Danger to eyes by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Informative

    I would be careful making very bright infrared light. Because your eyes do not pick them up, your pupils will not know to shrink in bright infrared light.

    I would suggest doing this in a very well lit room, and NEVER in the dark, or you will likely seriously damage your eyes.

    1. Re:Danger to eyes by francium+de+neobie · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Exactly the same thing I've been thinking after watching the demo. Although our eyes cannot see the IR light it can still pass onto the retina without much trouble. Using that thing for an extended period of time would quite probably damage the eyes.

    2. Re:Danger to eyes by blincoln · · Score: 3, Informative


      This thing gives off IR in a different frequency than the human body of course, but if in general IR light is "dangerous", then we'd all be blind years ago.


      The near-IR light given off by this type of device has very little to do with thermal IR. It is much closer to visible red light, just a bit lower frequency (a couple of hundred nm or less difference, versus thermal IR being closer to ten times lower frequency).
      Human eyes are also opaque to thermal IR, which is related to what the GP was getting at - near-IR is potentially dangerous because your eyes are transparent to it, but your retina has very little sensitivity to it. I doubt the amount of NIR illumination here is very significant, but imagine the equivalent of having a bright flashlight stuck in your face, except without the ability of your pupils to contract in response.

      --
      "...always new atoms but always doing the same dance, remembering what the dance was yesterday." -Richard Feynman
    3. Re:Danger to eyes by SilverAlicorn · · Score: 2

      Of course, you could just put single IR LEDs into fingers on gloves, and power them with a CR2032 battery or something. TFA's solution is actually kinda overkill.

  12. The goggles they do nothing by Earered · · Score: 5, Funny

    I'm sorry for the awful picture you will get in your mind if you continue reading.

    But it occured to me that you could use a penis instead of a finger (giving it another use beside: http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2007/03/21 )

    (Why, oh why this thought came to me...)

  13. Re:safe to use? by pilardi · · Score: 3, Interesting

    (Infrared == heat) This is not quite true. If (infrared == heat) then (visible light == even hotter heat). Every thing emits light. Things at normal environmental temperature (0-100 degC) emit primarily in the long-wave to mid-wave IR (about 10000nm or so). A typical IR LED emits in the near-ir (about 900nm or so) which corresponds to about 1000 degC or so. Red light, which is about 700nm, corresponds to about 3000 degC or so. So saying infrared == heat is very misleading. Caveat: the number are off the top of my head so they may be slightly off.

    A bright enough near-ir LED can damage your eyes, just as a bright enough visible LED can damage your eyes. The difference is that you notice the visible LED long before it starts to damage your eyes, but you won't notice the IR LED until perhaps it's too late. People who work with lasers (such as myself) have similar issues, you have to be very careful around IR lasers because you won't know if they are damaging your eyes until it's too late.

    Given that, I doubt these LEDs are bright enough to do any damage.