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TI Plans Minority Report UI Using ARM SoC + Projector
siliconbits writes "Texas Instruments wants to deliver a Minority Report-like user interface by combining its just-announced OMAP 5 platform, which is based on two Cortex A15 cores, with one of its own DLP pico projectors and a camera. The US semiconductor giant wants to pioneer the use of so-called next generation natural user interfaces by adding hardware support for stereoscopic 3D, gesturing including proximity sensor and interactive projection. This is reminiscent of the SixthSense, a wearable device invented by Pranav Mistry, which was demoed back in March 2009 by the then-PhD student of MIT's Media Lab Fluid Interfaces Group at TED."
What's this obsession with Minority Report interfaces? They really don't look very ergonomic to me - I'd imagine all kind of law suits if people had to use these on a regular basis. Just because it's been in a (shitty) sci-fi film doesn't mean it's a great idea.
If you're going to make tech based on popular films you should really start with the Hoverboard and Mr Fussion first. Once you've got those sorted then you can make dumb arse UIs.
While I think that standing in front of a 'computer' and waving my hands looking retarded isn't the best way to interface with a machine, it would get folks off the couch and at least moving more than their fingers.
Just don't make it mobile. People look stupid enough with bluetooth head sets as it is.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
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They're going to do the same as a Kinect, but for more expensive?
~Syberz
I've been too comfortable, sitting in a big desk chair all day, hardly moving a mouse a few inches to summon an entire world of information. What I really want is to be standing up all day in front of a huge transparent screen, holding my hands up in the air and wildly waving my arms around. That would be a huge improvement.
Minority Report was NOT a camera-based gesture recognition interface!
There is a control glove! 2 of them!
Every single time someone does this, it is always gesture-based camera systems and they completely forgot the hand-piece!
Quit that shit already and go back and see it.
Here, better yet, the video of the exact scene.
Minority Report viewscreen
Someone e-mail EVERYONE, EVER.
Gesture-based recognition systems are terrible, they really are. They have absolutely no precision, at all.
I wish people would get away from this crap and realize that actual, physical controls are GOOD.
Every gesture system has failed. Even gaming ones have failed. Eyetoy, overall, failed. Kinect is already failing a slow, but very sure death, despite the advertising. (and that stupid price as well, what in hell are they thinking?)
Gaming gesture recognition is just plain awful. It limits your interaction significantly and lowers accuracy. (to the point of some games even playing themselves to hide how awfully limiting gesture input is.)
TI, please don't waste your time doing this. Optical Gesture-recognition is the most hyped up failure in all of tech history. The Kinect crap certainly isn't helping, neither is this.
A wearable device is infinitely better than optical gesture recognition.
Also, accessibility accessibility accessibility. Not everyone wants to, or CAN, flail their arms around for possibly hours at a time.
.....just thinking about it. I prefer the current interface where I just lay my arm on the table, and barely move at all except to adjust the mouse & click.
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
Sure, sure, not enough foresight but it still feels like a solution in search of a problem. Anything that impairs a person from using a computer will probably be an expensive enough procedure that they would have assistants anyway except for a car mechanic and even then, what would the benefit be over, say, voice recognition or designing rugged, water-proof and washable interface hardware?
3, 2, 1...
For ages I've been wondering why processor power has increased many times over but input devices have hardly changed at all.
Because for general purpose computer use, a keyboard and mouse are hard to beat.
The two main faults of every attempt i'v seen so far, and this one seems to be head on to be another expensive bloated inefficient interface.
(ok, no words, one picture)
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
First we got Bluetooth headsets which made people talking on the phone indistinguishable from schizophrenics, now we get this new GUI technology which makes computer users indistinguishable from spastics... what next?
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
I don't want Minority Report UI. I want the Earth Final Conflict UI(and device). Hell, it was sponsored by Sprint even IIRC
Gesture interfaces are all about looking cool and getting babes.
Do what you can, with what you have, where you are.
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If someone really came up with better input devices, the pro computer gamers would be using them.
As for user interfaces, Starcraft players seem to manage very many actions per second.
So the challenge is to create a user interface that's friendly and usable to "noobs" but also able to augment pros/experts to their limits.
Most recent UIs seem to emphasize friendly and usable to "new users", but they neglect the case where some of those new users don't mind taking the trouble to learn to do things very very much faster.
For ages I've been wondering why processor power has increased many times over but input devices have hardly changed at all.
Apparently not many "ages", or your idea of an age is like my idea of a long coffee break.
Dectapes, punchcards, and a "programmers console" forever!
"Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
If someone really came up with better input devices, the pro computer gamers would be using them. As for user interfaces, Starcraft players seem to manage very many actions per second. So the challenge is to create a user interface that's friendly and usable to "noobs" but also able to augment pros/experts to their limits. Most recent UIs seem to emphasize friendly and usable to "new users", but they neglect the case where some of those new users don't mind taking the trouble to learn to do things very very much faster.
current games are designed around KB mouse input, the kinect stuff is programmed to take advantage of the hardware. give it time.
That let the cat out of the bag!
-kgj
This makes sense in the medical sector.
Who wouldn't want a 3D holographic representation of their patient in real time to rotate, zoom and pan?
So....I'll look like Tom Cruise in Minority Report, complete with the gloves....in my 2m x 2m cubicle...doing my Stationary Budgets...my somewhat overweight guy ass moving like a lap dancer's toward the cubicle entrance.
Yep, this'll really fly. Just wait till those cuties from graphics with their iMacs get sight of this. They'll be wanting the same, just to be like me.
In post Patriot Act America, the library books scan you.
"While I think that standing in front of a 'computer' and waving my hands looking retarded isn't the best way to interface with a machine, it would get folks off the couch and at least moving more than their fingers. "
...which would probably be a net decrease in productivity, unfortunately. While I think getting people up and moving around more would be healthy, I don't know how efficient it would be to introduce large limb moments to work flow. Here is my thinking as to why:
Musicians are privy to a little secret, in order to get fast and fluid with your fingers, you try to move them as little as possible. Its easier and faster to move small muscle groups than larger ones. Fencers try to move from the wrist, and not from the elbow or shoulder. So, while its cool looking to see tom cruse waving his arms all over the place, it would probably be really tiring and slow.
Not that this will keep a virtual projected ui scheme from working, it just will probably end up being exactly what you see from Hollywood.
HA! I just wasted some of your bandwidth with a frivolous sig!
I don't know about you, but while I thought the Minority Report UI was *cool*, it would SUCK to work with. Enter text? Copy? Paste?
You basically can't sit at a desk, you'd have to stand so as to wave your arms about.
On the plus side, we couldn't all be stuffed into our little veal-fattening pens, there simply wouldn't be enough room.
-Styopa
The UI that Tony Stark uses in the Iron Man movies is very much like the Minority Report one, except that he actually works with his hands in front of him and at waist/chest level. Like people work with real objects. Just because I can turn down the speed on my mouse so it requires me to move it across the entire desk doesn't mean I will...
Yeah, we know, for all the data entry, heavy computer use/coding jobs an interface like the Minority Report one is stupid and inefficient. But at least it's a step in the right direction. For those of you that have been posting about how nice it is to sit in an office chair and click a mouse all day, I have to ask what kind of ecstasy you're popping to make that a pleasant experience.
I fucking hate the typical cubicle set up. It makes my lower back hurt after 5 hours. My shoulders constantly ache from being crouched over a tiny POS keyboard. My right hand is significantly fatigued by the end of the day, whereas my left elbow is killing me from leaning my weight on it constantly. Sitting on my ass all day puts enough pressure on my prostate (okay, I have a bony ass) that I wonder if it might have negative effects on the libido. Squinting at monitors that blast my face with bright white backgrounds all day makes me hate the color white.
When it comes down to it, the typical cubie setup is a completely shit arrangement to be stuck in for 8 hours on end. So to fix it, we have to get up every hour and stretch or walk about for 5 minutes. We pay for massages and chiropractic adjustments to fix our strained backs. And don't even get me started on the amount of tension we hold in our jaws. What TI is proposing, here, is an interface that could let you stand up for a period, then sit down for a period. It could use an 'on-screen,' split keyboard for when you need to type in info. It would be capable of projecting onto a cubicle wall, so I wouldn't be tethered to a monitor on a desktop. It will be clunky and a PITA for the first generation or two, but give it some time and some prototypes and we could really be working our way towards a useful engineering interface that frees us from the ergonomic hell that is the cubicle lifestyle. Personally I'd like to see more research go into this field.
I know a lot of engineers that wet themselves when they watched the first Iron Man where Tony Stark designs an exoskeleton using a 3-D holographic touch interface. That was damn cool and you know it. If projects like the one TI is proposing get us closer to that kind of modeling interface little by little, I'm all for it. Bring it on TI!
Motorcycles, Robots, Space Gossip and More!
So have you heard about gorilla arm syndrome http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2010/10/gorilla-arm-multitouch/ that makes Minority report like interfaces fail?
So the challenge is to create a user interface that's friendly and usable to "noobs" but also able to augment pros/experts to their limits.
Why's that the challenge? Make one that's powerful for experts, and those worthy will adapt.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
I need to compile a list, but off the top of my head Earth: The Final Conflict did this years before Minority Report. That is all.
Disclaimer: MINAA (Mummy! I'm Not An Animal!)
I don't care at all about the interface.
OMAP 5 is scheduled for release in the second half of 2011. Has anyone seen one of these in action? Not minority report whatever, just dual A15 cores running anything?
And is this the first product to reach even early production with an A15 core or cores? Is there any A15 presence around other than this? I see NVidia is planning something, but it's still vapour, right?
I'd like to use both my ARMs.
As if people didn't already have enough things to distract them while driving, or crossing the street...
Kinect adds a lag of about 200-250 milliseconds:
http://www.anandtech.com/print/4057
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MF9b5UiVq-Q
That's fine for casual use, crap for the pros.
You can react faster than kinect - just watch the video and move your hand up/down when the person in the video does it. You can do it before Kinect does.
If you were playing an FPS using a kinect against someone who was using a low lag controller, many times you would already be "dead" before kinect recognized your action.
As for work, whenever possible, it's the humans that should be making stuff wait, not the computers/controllers/UI ;).