The Leap: Gesture Control Like Kinect, But Cheaper and Higher Resolution

MrSeb writes "It seems Minority Report-style computer interfaces might arrive a whole lot sooner than we expected: A new USB device, called The Leap, creates an 8-cubic-feet bubble of 'interaction space,' which detects your hand gestures down to an accuracy of 0.01 millimeters — about 200 times more accurate than 'existing touch-free products and technologies,' such as your smartphone's touchscreen or Microsoft Kinect. Unfortunately Leap Motion (the company behind the Leap) is being very tight-lipped about the technology being used, but it's probably some kind of infrared LIDAR (radar, but using light), or perhaps a high-resolution version of Kinect (which only uses a 640x480 camera). It's available to pre-order for $70 — and developers can register for a free device + SDK."

Comments

Fishy...

[Missing.Matter]

I'm having trouble understanding exactly what kinds of technology this device is using to obtain accuracy on the level of 10 micrometers for $70. On the website they only state:

Leap Motion technology is a breakthrough in computer interaction, using a patented mathematical approach to 3D, touch-free motion sensing and motion control software that’s unlike anything that currently exists on the market or in academia. Developed over the past 4 years, Leap Motion moves far beyond the current technologies designed for distant arm waving.

But that say a whole lot of nothing... Why are they being so coy about the technology behind the device? According to cnet, the company says:

"It's not as if we're using lots of processing power or some new hardware that just came on to the market," he said. "This is really about a fundamental scientific breakthrough, many Eureka moments that (Holz) stumbled through over four or five years of research."

So they want me to believe they came up with some magic algorithm, and not some new hardware tech? Because as far as I'm aware, the limitations in most sensors is hardware based, not software.

Re:Fishy...

[vlm]

I'm having trouble understanding exactly what kinds of technology this device is using to obtain accuracy on the level of 10 micrometers for $70. On the website they only state:

I'm having huge difficulty understanding how this is getting rolled out for video gaming instead of manufacturing.

A 3-d CAD "tasting" probe that goes in place of a cutting tool and touches what you're working on to measure its dimensions is about that accurate, very slow, requires some setup, and in manufacturing we pretty much don't care how much it costs (In a world of $100K milling machines and $30/hr CAM programmers, don't really care if its $70 one time cost or $7000)

If this isn't vaporware, how come I haven't heard about this tech destroying existing CAM monitoring/testing sensor systems?

Heck, 10 micrometers with low enough latency for gaming is enough to close the loop on a servo system.. imagine that, a CAM servo controller that doesn't need encoders. Weird but it could happen. Not to mention integrated OSHA detection of people entering the envelope or detection cataclysmic tool failure (snapped off).

I should be hearing about this making motor driver manufacturers and DRO manufacturers quake in their boots.

Re:What's wrong with keyboards?

[iivel]

Personally, I'll be registering for a developer kit; or buying one outright to help a friend of mine with ALS. Since she's severely limited in movement, the ability to control her computer (and thereby much of her enviornment) via small recognizable gestures would be a drastic improvement for her quality of life.

Re:What's wrong with keyboards?

[Thanshin]

Why do we need all these fucking gestures and shit? I guess most people still haven't figured out how to TYPE.

Typing is an unnatural interface that we've just grown accustomed to. After a while, we've become quite good at typing, but it's still an interface that one has to actually learn to use.

A more natural interface would be speech, but speech recognition is still far from the reliability of a keyboard.

On a parallel path, the mouse, while much (MUCH) more natural than a keyboard, can still get better. As soon as 2D displays are really replaced by 3D, mice would have to become 3D also.

The first problem was that 2D display (screen) and 2D gesture recognition (mouse) were easier than speech recognition. And now we are in a similar situation with 3D mice (this) and 3D screens (still crap).

The beauty of it all it that they'll all eventually converge in the same spot. Thought input and though output.

Re:What's wrong with keyboards?

[h4rr4r]

Speech is an unnatural interface, that one has to learn to use. It is also slow, inaccurate and cumbersome. Those are the problem when using it to interacts with other humans, trying to use it with computers is even worse.

The mouse is less natural, try to show an old person one. They will prefer the keyboard. 3D displays will not

Re:Developer link

[chill]

Considering they're not one, not two, but NINETEEN versions behind in their OpenSSL software (currently at 0.9.8x) AND they're running FrontPage extensions, I have little confidence in their online process for creating accounts and placing orders. Oh, and they're 2 versions behind on Apache as well.

Apache/2.2.19 (Unix) mod_ssl/2.2.19 OpenSSL/0.9.8e-fips-rhel5 mod_auth_passthrough/2.1 mod_bwlimited/1.4 FrontPage/5.0.2.2635 Server at www.leapmotion.com Port 80