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

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

Posted by samzenpus on Monday May 21, 2012 @04:40AM from the all-the-better-to-track-you-with dept.

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."

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What's wrong with keyboards? by Anonymous Coward · 2012-05-21 04:41 · Score: 2, Insightful

Why do we need all these fucking gestures and shit? I guess most people still haven't figured out how to TYPE.
1. Re:What's wrong with keyboards? by ArcherB · 2012-05-21 04:48 · Score: 2
  
  Why do we need all these fucking gestures and shit? I guess most people still haven't figured out how to TYPE.
  It's a workout trying to get connect to recognize what I'm doing, but even if it were more accurate, I still have to hold my arms out to simply find out where the "pointer" is.
  A mouse is still a better pointing device. A flick of the wrist is much more efficient in all ways than a wave of the arm.
  
  --
  There is no "I disagree" mod for a reason. Flamebait, Troll, and Overrated are not substitutes.
2. Re:What's wrong with keyboards? by iivel · 2012-05-21 04:49 · Score: 5, Interesting
  
  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.
3. Re:What's wrong with keyboards? by Brad1138 · 2012-05-21 04:52 · Score: 1
  
  Have you not seen Ironman? How else can you easily and quickly design custom metal suits?
  
  --
  If you could reason with religious people, there would be no religious people
4. Re:What's wrong with keyboards? by Anonymous Coward · 2012-05-21 04:52 · Score: 4, Insightful
  
  There are plenty of environments where keyboards aren't ideal or even possible... think about a hospital OR (viewing PACS data) or media-based presentation. Such setups could also be helpful in other areas where sanitary rules would make touch-less devices a much better solution, like food processing plants and restaurants, etc.
  Of course what's wrong with only 640K anyway? I guess people just haven't learn to code properly.
5. Re:What's wrong with keyboards? by Thanshin · 2012-05-21 04:56 · Score: 4, Interesting
  
  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.
6. Re:What's wrong with keyboards? by h4rr4r · 2012-05-21 05:09 · Score: 4, Interesting
  
  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
7. Re:What's wrong with keyboards? by h4rr4r · 2012-05-21 05:10 · Score: 1
  
  finishing above reply:
  3D displays will not catch on if they are still going to be stereoscopic. Holographic displays may catch on, but a mouse and keyboard will likely still be in use. Just like current 3D modeling uses them.
8. Re:What's wrong with keyboards? by alexborges · 2012-05-21 05:11 · Score: 4, Insightful
  
  Missing the point: it is not about computers, its about a wall mounted intelligent tv with automatic voice-command recognition that can turn your coffee on or off, download your tv episodes ...etc.
  The future for computers has always been ubiquity, invisibility and support for daily shit.
  
  --
  NO SIG
9. Re:What's wrong with keyboards? by swalve · 2012-05-21 05:15 · Score: 1
  
  That's a nice thought, but if she can't work a mouse, how is she going to work this?
10. Re:What's wrong with keyboards? by Anonymous Coward · 2012-05-21 05:20 · Score: 1
  
  Actually, I don't expect that I'll ever need that much computer assistance for my daily shit. Invisible or otherwise.
11. Re:What's wrong with keyboards? by hamburger+lady · 2012-05-21 05:22 · Score: 1
  
  type? lookee here everyone, we got ourselves a typist.
  in my day we scrawled shit on cave walls with our own blood. and we liked it!
  
  --
  
  ---
  Is this the MPAA? Is this the RIAA? Is this the DMCA? I thought it was the USA!
12. Re:What's wrong with keyboards? by RobertLTux · 2012-05-21 05:25 · Score: 2
  
  well for those areas where there is a serious Ick/Squick factor they do make "rollup" keyboards that can in fact be sanitized/cleaned.
  And worst case all you would have to do is roll the keyboard up and chuck it into the nearest "burn bag/Bin". (and yes these things are cheap enough that having to BBin say 4 or 5 a month should not be a budget breaker)
  
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13. Re:What's wrong with keyboards? by Cinder6 · 2012-05-21 05:28 · Score: 4, Insightful
  
  It's never been about need. We don't need the vast majority of technology out there. All you really need is access to food and water, a nice cave to shelter you from the elements, and a way to keep warm. Technology--especially tech such as this--is supposed to make things easier and/or improve quality of life.
  "We don't need that" is rarely a good argument. Instead, you should investigate whether the proposed solution will make things better or worse, or have no impact (in which case you don't have to waste resources on it).
  
  --
  If you can't convince them, convict them.
14. Re:What's wrong with keyboards? by Defenestrar · 2012-05-21 05:38 · Score: 3, Insightful
  
  I'd be interested in having the (cooled down) hot water lines in my house purged when I walk into the bathroom in the morning, or the kitchen preparing and cooking my dinner to be ready when my car tells it I'll be home. For that matter, I'd be interested in reading a book all the way home while my car navigated, accident free, through smoothly flowing optimized traffic. Waving at my computer to make 3-D spatial adjustments instead of using a planar pointer just sounds like a good idea.
15. Re:What's wrong with keyboards? by cupantae · 2012-05-21 05:46 · Score: 4, Insightful
  
  "For a new technology to be successful, it must replace all usage cases of older technology"
  -- /. Anonymous Cowards and Moderators (apparently)
  In my current setup, I'd say I use my keyboard ~90% of the time and my mouse only about 10%.
  Listen: I'm still glad I have the mouse.
  
  --
  --
16. Re:What's wrong with keyboards? by b0bby · 2012-05-21 05:55 · Score: 3, Insightful
  
  Maybe she can move her head, or just her whole hand; there could be any number of ways to use this when you can't move a mouse. ALS is horrible, anything which can make life easier for her is a good thing.
17. Re:What's wrong with keyboards? by Delwin · 2012-05-21 05:58 · Score: 1
  
  I think you missed the point of his comment. I don't think I'll need much computer assistance for my daily bathroom break either. Now one that will help me by tying my coffee pot to my alarm might be welcome... but somehow I just don't think a computer will help me defecate.
18. Re:What's wrong with keyboards? by Delwin · 2012-05-21 06:00 · Score: 2
  
  Point it at your face and make twitching movements with your cheeks. This takes the technology in Stephan Hawking's chair and makes it inexpensive enough people with ALS who aren't world famous scientsts could use it.
19. Re:What's wrong with keyboards? by ron_ivi · 2012-05-21 06:02 · Score: 4, Insightful
  
  Why do we need all these fucking gestures and shit? I guess most people still haven't figured out how to TYPE.
  That is exactly *why* we need gesture recognition.
  People communicate with each other -- and with their pets, and even with pre-verbal babies -- with gestures and not with keyboards.
  I often use this as an example of why we continue to need better compute power --- until I can give my computer a dirty look or an obscene gesture to make it stop doing something I don't like, we'll continue to have a need for better human-computer interfaces.
  This is *exactly* a step in the right direction -- where the computer learns how humans communicate -- instead of making humans have to learn something convenient for computers (pushing buttons / typing on keyboards).
20. Re:What's wrong with keyboards? by FatdogHaiku · 2012-05-21 06:11 · Score: 4, Funny
  
  Actually, I don't expect that I'll ever need that much computer assistance for my daily shit. Invisible or otherwise.
  But... but... HOW will you manage without toilet paper sheet counting and averaging? You will actually have to remember to go buy T.P. instead of having Amazon ship you a case every so often automatically. Also, properly placed sensors can make sure you wipe properly, and then ask if you would like to upload a video of your last "download"...
  
  --
  You have the right to remain sentient. If you give up the right to remain sentient, you will be elected to public office
21. Re:What's wrong with keyboards? by nschubach · 2012-05-21 06:19 · Score: 5, Informative
  
  I'd be interested in having the (cooled down) hot water lines in my house purged when I walk into the bathroom in the morning
  That can be done by a plumber... or yourself if you are ambitious. Run a return line from your bathroom branch of your plumbing to a lower point on your water heater (there's a drain valve at the bottom... you can 'T' off before that) and natural convection of water will ensure that your pipes are always "charged" with hot water from your water heater. It's called a hot water loop or a recirculating loop.
  Link
  Page 5 (You can usually forgo the pump if your water heater is in the basement)
  
  --
  Every time I start to have faith in humanity, I ruin it by driving to work between 7 and 8 am.
22. Re:What's wrong with keyboards? by Anonymous Coward · 2012-05-21 06:31 · Score: 2, Insightful
  
  So you're saying why innovate new technology when there's an existing technology right now that's cheap enough to just burn up and throw away?
  You work for the oil industry, don't you?
23. Re:What's wrong with keyboards? by rezalas · 2012-05-21 06:36 · Score: 1
  
  Just get a coffee machine with multiple startup times.
24. Re:What's wrong with keyboards? by teslar · 2012-05-21 06:47 · Score: 1
  
  A more natural interface would be speech
  But that would be a terrible main interface. I don't want to talk at my computer for hours per day. And I'm pretty sure that people who, for instance, work in large open plan offices or even in a cubicle farm wouldn't want the 200 colleagues in the same room all constantly yapping away at their computers either. As I'm typing this, others are in the same room watching TV and they wouldn't appreciate me dictating this either.
  Typing may not be natural but at least it's (nearly) silent. Which is what an interaction with a computer should be.
25. Re:What's wrong with keyboards? by mcgrew · 2012-05-21 07:02 · Score: 1
  
  Insightful? Don't you just love it when some goofball logs in as AC with an ignorant luddite remark, then logs in and mods himelf up, then logs in under his sock puppet and "hey! I Gots me some mod points on this sucker, too!"
  I guess most people still haven't figured out how to TYPE
  Typing is only useful when you need to write. I was comfortable with a command line twenty years or so ago, but the mouse makes far more sense for anything except communication or documentation.
  Good luck using PhotoShop (or damned near any Windows program) by just typing. Games are far less fun with a keyboard than with a mouse or joystick, and gestures could even let you get a little excersize while playing.
  If the resolution on this thing is good enough, you could fingerpaint with it.
  Ever tried typing on a tablet? I have a computer plugged into my TV, it would be great to be able to contol it without the wireless mouse. The wireless keyboard usually sits on a shelf (right now its batteries are dead).
  Give it three seconds thought and you can come up with a lot more uses. Gees, first dumb people posting and now dumb people moderating.
  
  --
  Free Martian Whores!
26. Re:What's wrong with keyboards? by RKBA · 2012-05-21 07:06 · Score: 2
  
  ...I don't think I'll need much computer assistance for my daily bathroom break either. .... but somehow I just don't think a computer will help me defecate.
  Butt imagine the convenience of a computerized toilet seat with twelve button remote control for only $1700?
  
  --
  9/11 Eyewitnesses to Explosive WTC Demolition 1 of 2
27. Re:What's wrong with keyboards? by Belial6 · 2012-05-21 07:22 · Score: 2
  
  That isn't really what he was asking for. He doesn't want to cool all that water by constantly running it through a radiator. He also doesn't want to heat his house by turning his plumbing into a radiator that is always running full blast.
  
  You are right that he can do it though.
  
  This will pump the cold water out of the hot water pipe into the cold water pipe for $169.92:
  http://www.smarthome.com/54001/Chilipepper-Sales-Inc-CP6000-Hot-Water-Demand-Pump/p.aspx
  
  And this will make it happen when you enter the room for $34.99:
  http://www.smarthome.com/2420M/Skylink-Wireless-INSTEON-Motion-Occupancy-Sensor/p.aspx
28. Re:What's wrong with keyboards? by Sponge+Bath · 2012-05-21 07:27 · Score: 1
  
  Why do we need all these fucking gestures and shit?
  Angus Podgorney prefers the soothing click and clack of his abacus!
29. Re:What's wrong with keyboards? by Belial6 · 2012-05-21 07:29 · Score: 1
  
  This wouldn't be a good replacement for a mouse, just as a mouse isn't a good replacement for a keyboard. I would be great as an addition though. Take volume control as an example. There are (at least in American culture) universal hand gestures for telling someone you want them to increase or decrease volume as well as mute. There is also a universal gesture to indicate that you want the current activity to stop dead in it's tracks. I'm sure that we could think of all sorts of natural hand gestures that we already use that we would like our computers to understand.
30. Re:What's wrong with keyboards? by Belial6 · 2012-05-21 07:39 · Score: 1
  
  That is the key. There are few places that I would be happy with just a keyboard. My TV (which is a Linux computer build into the TV) is the closest, but I'm not really happy with the interface. It just sucks less than every other option. Likewise there are very few places I would be happy with just a mouse.
31. Re:What's wrong with keyboards? by nschubach · 2012-05-21 08:17 · Score: 1
  
  Yes it is. I'm not sure what you were reading but there's no radiator... all it's doing is using natural convection of water (heat rises) to allow the hot water to fill the pipe and the return water line allows the cooled water to return to the bottom of the water heater. It keeps hot water in the pipes at all times. (without a radiator)
  On page 5 of that PDF it uses a pump like the one you linked, but that pump is purely optional if you have your water heater in your basement. The natural convection will work to keep hot water nearby your bathroom.
  
  --
  Every time I start to have faith in humanity, I ruin it by driving to work between 7 and 8 am.
32. Re:What's wrong with keyboards? by wonkey_monkey · 2012-05-21 08:17 · Score: 1
  
  What's expensive, really, about Hawking's set-up? I'm sure I could write a (possibly simplified) version of his word selection software in an afternoon and connect it to a switch.
  
  --
  systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
33. Re:What's wrong with keyboards? by Cytotoxic · 2012-05-21 08:22 · Score: 1
  
  The pipes in the walls are the radiator he's referring to.
34. Re:What's wrong with keyboards? by Pumpkin+Tuna · 2012-05-21 08:26 · Score: 1
  
  Are you one of those freaks who always knows where their remote is? I'll bet you are, aren't you?
35. Re:What's wrong with keyboards? by bware · 2012-05-21 08:58 · Score: 2
  
  People communicate with each other -- and with their pets, and even with pre-verbal babies -- with gestures and not with keyboards.
  I'm not sure that this is true now [1] much less that it will be in the future. While I'm not closeted in my mom's basement, I'd estimate that at least 50% of my interactions with my colleagues, collaborators, friends (incl. those of the girl variety), and family occur through keyboards. Think about it. Text, chat, email, social networks - even with the people I live with, we communicate extensively via keyboard. Even with a live-in girlfriend, we'd chat during the day as much as we did at night. Continuous constant availability hasn't taken away from in person communications, but they've made them much more extensive. Before email, sms, and mobile phones, I'd only talk to my SO in the evening - now it's short messages all day long.
  That's my life, and I'm old. I look at the twenties that I work with, and they're even more virtual than me. Which is not to say that they don't interact with people in real life, but that they're continually interacting with them via a keyboard.
  Yeah, the dogs don't have an iPhone. Yet.
  
  until I can give my computer a dirty look or an obscene gesture to make it stop doing something I don't like, we'll continue to have a need for better human-computer interfaces.
  Yeah, and how's that dirty-look/obscene-gesture interface working on the humans, or pets, in your life? If someone gets that working for computers, that'll be the only place it works.
  [1] for everyone - realizing that this is a first-world problem, but we are talking about human-computer interfaces, so let's limit the discussion to the small subset of humans on the planet who use computers),
36. Re:What's wrong with keyboards? by volmtech · 2012-05-21 09:39 · Score: 1
  
  Arthritis, carpal tunnel, poor eye sight. You're going to be old one of these days, then you will understand.
37. Re:What's wrong with keyboards? by Mike+Buddha · 2012-05-21 12:03 · Score: 1
  
  You can get coffee makers with clocks that will brew at a specified time. That's old tech.
  
  --
  by Mike Buddha -- Someday the mountain might get him, but the law never will.
38. Re:What's wrong with keyboards? by thereitis · 2012-05-21 13:54 · Score: 1
  
  This wouldn't be a good replacement for a mouse, just as a mouse isn't a good replacement for a keyboard. I would be great as an addition though.
  I agree and I'm sure that interesting ideas will come out of this, despite the knee-jerk reactions of some of the posters here.
39. Re:What's wrong with keyboards? by socceroos · 2012-05-21 15:06 · Score: 1
  
  That is the key.
  No, it's the mouse.
40. Re:What's wrong with keyboards? by Raenex · 2012-05-21 15:30 · Score: 1
  
  The mouse is less natural, try to show an old person one.
  I've never personally experienced this, but if a keyboard is "more natural" to an old person it's probably because they grew up with typewriters. Give an old person a keyboard with command line versus a mouse with a GUI and see which one they'll adopt to faster.
41. Re:What's wrong with keyboards? by Raenex · 2012-05-21 15:36 · Score: 1
  
  until I can give my computer a dirty look or an obscene gesture to make it stop doing something I don't like
  I really don't want my tools interpreting my emotions and acting upon them. Yes, it makes for good sci-fi stories, but what I want from my tools is precision and reliability.
42. Re:What's wrong with keyboards? by jaymemaurice · 2012-05-21 17:27 · Score: 1
  
  perfect technology for germaphobes.
  
  --
  120 characters ought to be enough for anyone
43. Re:What's wrong with keyboards? by vivian · 2012-05-21 18:48 · Score: 1
  
  They are still acting as radiators (albeit not very good ones), or the OP wouldn't have a problem in the first place.
44. Re:What's wrong with keyboards? by robthebloke · 2012-05-21 21:38 · Score: 1
  
  How do gestures improve the user experience, over say, speech recognition?
45. Re:What's wrong with keyboards? by drdaz · 2012-05-21 22:16 · Score: 1
  
  Actually, I don't expect that I'll ever need that much computer assistance for my daily shit.
  Computerized laxatives - the digital future of constipation treatment.
46. Re:What's wrong with keyboards? by geekmux · 2012-05-21 22:34 · Score: 1
  
  I'd be interested in having the (cooled down) hot water lines in my house purged when I walk into the bathroom in the morning, or the kitchen preparing and cooking my dinner to be ready when my car tells it I'll be home. For that matter, I'd be interested in reading a book all the way home while my car navigated, accident free, through smoothly flowing optimized traffic. Waving at my computer to make 3-D spatial adjustments instead of using a planar pointer just sounds like a good idea.
  With this level of automation you're describing, I'm curious, what exactly would you be driving your car to or from? If your boss was as enthusiastic as you are about automation, chances are your job was replaced by a robot or script.
  Automation can be beneficial, but perhaps not so much in the long run if we take it too far, too fast.
47. Re:What's wrong with keyboards? by mwvdlee · 2012-05-21 23:23 · Score: 1
  
  shit on cave walls with our own blood
  You might want to go see a doctor.
  
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48. Re:What's wrong with keyboards? by reg106 · 2012-05-22 01:25 · Score: 1
  
  Check out the Evolve line of showerheads. You still have to turn on the shower to start the purge, but the showerhead cuts the flow once the water gets hot, and then you restart the flow by pulling a cord. That way you waste only the water that was sitting in the line, not the hot water.
49. Re:What's wrong with keyboards? by ArsenneLupin · 2012-05-22 02:08 · Score: 1
  
  a video of your last "download"
  Of your last (core) dump. If you try to be funny, at least try to get your puns right :-)
50. Re:What's wrong with keyboards? by ArsenneLupin · 2012-05-22 02:20 · Score: 1
  
  Insightful? Don't you just love it when some goofball logs in as AC with an ignorant luddite remark, then logs in and mods himelf up, then logs in under his sock puppet and "hey! I Gots me some mod points on this sucker, too!"
  Hehe, this is Slashdot...
51. Re:What's wrong with keyboards? by skydyr · 2012-05-22 02:39 · Score: 1
  
  The correct term really should be "upload" since it's going into the series of tubes.
52. Re:What's wrong with keyboards? by alexborges · 2012-05-22 07:01 · Score: 1
  
  How about both? You cant "grab" a video, make it smaller, turn on another channel or youtube video and position it besides the first one. Or rather you can, but with speech it would be a lengthy process while grabing, resizing, playing (or invoking a play of video #2 with voice) and positioning both videos can be done in three swift moves.
  Its not either/or. Its both. I want my voice recognition and my gesture thingie. What is ridiculous is the Microsoft wouldnt think of this "small box of interaction", sensor facing up, to get higher resolution than kinect and a better interface for what we now call a PC or iTV, bis a bis the long distance and poor 3d resolution of kinect. Its such an obvious, beautiful trade-off.
  
  --
  NO SIG
53. Re:What's wrong with keyboards? by robsku · 2012-05-23 19:27 · Score: 1
  
  You are mostly correct, but you do belittle keyboards usefullness. Sure, in games, in image manipulation programs, *sometimes* in GUI's the mouse can give huge advantages - however, one of the reasons I use FireFox as browser, for example, is because it has the best extensions for configuring it to work 100% without having to move my hand from KB and pick up a mouse.
  Why? Well, I'm not interested in using keyboard instead of mouse when it offers no advantage - for most tasks it's faster, that is after you learn it.
  
  --
  In capitalist USA corporations control the government.
54. Re:What's wrong with keyboards? by mcgrew · 2012-05-24 01:28 · Score: 1
  
  Well, I do agree that the worst is when an application makes you continually switch between keyboard and mouse. MS Access is terrible about this, one should never need to touch the mouse to program, or in a word processor or text editor. Likewise, you should never need the keyboard in a graphics program. My beef is "mouse elbow" that I often get when I spend too much time in front of the computer.
  
  --
  Free Martian Whores!
touch-free touchscreens! by Thanshin · 2012-05-21 04:42 · Score: 5, Funny

"about 200 times more accurate than 'existing touch-free products and technologies,' such as your smartphone's touchscreen"
They sure have a bizarre definition of "touch-free" if it includes a touchscreen.
1. Re:touch-free touchscreens! by pruss · 2012-05-21 05:00 · Score: 1
  
  Capacitive screens don't need a physical contact. Maybe that's what they're thinking?
Fishy... by Missing.Matter · 2012-05-21 04:47 · Score: 5, Interesting

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.
1. Re:Fishy... by Anonymous Coward · 2012-05-21 04:50 · Score: 2, Insightful
  
  add to that the leap itself is supposed to be that little box but is somehow able to scan both sides of your hand at the same time and see stacked objects (the video shows hands passing over each other for example) and it kinda looks staged...
2. Re:Fishy... by vlm · 2012-05-21 05:03 · Score: 5, Interesting
  
  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.
  
  --
  "Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
3. Re:Fishy... by Missing.Matter · 2012-05-21 05:08 · Score: 1
  
  I'm having huge difficulty understanding how this is getting rolled out for video gaming instead of manufacturing.
  Yes! This is something I was also thinking. This kind of technology would be great in medicine, manufacturing, various industrial applications, robotics, retail... they could have complete domination over various sectors worth billions. Yet they're shooting for consumer electronics? Seriously?
4. Re:Fishy... by ArhcAngel · 2012-05-21 05:09 · Score: 2
  
  "This is really about a fundamental scientific breakthrough, many Eureka moments that (Holz) stumbled through over four or five years of research."
  Considering that when I think of a Eureka moment it generally includes some variant of an "end of the world" scenario that sheriff Carter will miraculously albeit precariously save us from I'm not sure I want one of these in every household.
  
  --
  "A person is smart. People are dumb, panicky dangerous animals and you know it." - K
5. Re:Fishy... by Missing.Matter · 2012-05-21 05:10 · Score: 1
  
  I don't think so, since they talk about chaining several of these together to increase the effective workspace. If they're bouncing signals all over the place, there would be an unmanageable amount of crosstalk between sensors.
6. Re:Fishy... by element-o.p. · 2012-05-21 05:30 · Score: 1
  
  Different frequencies on each unit, perhaps?
  
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7. Re:Fishy... by saveferrousoxide · 2012-05-21 05:31 · Score: 1
  
  i think the 8 cf thing becomes limiting. plus, i don't see any reason it would be good at generating a 3-d model. all the motion detection can be done based on 2-d processing. so in that respect, there's no reason to assume that it would be any better at 3-d modeling that a digital camera with some cool software behind it. Now this might give your "tasting" probe people something to consider.
8. Re:Fishy... by guruevi · 2012-05-21 05:54 · Score: 2
  
  video measuring CAN really be that precise (given the right sensors, lenses, calibration and algorithms). A servo controller using camera's - see what (amateur) robots can do these days merely on "sight".
  Why haven't you heard about such tech yet - there are various problems when applying this to your specific field
  - Nobody has made it yet (well they have, but not repurposed for your machines)?
  - Your machines are 100k+ as you said yourself, your boss is not going to throw those out within 3 years and those machines have no place for such newfangled tech yet.
  - There are many situations where 'sight' only may not be a good fit (high speed metal cutting). And when your new tech only solves one very specific problem it's not worth investing in.
  - Those markets have already entrenched themselves with specific solutions and there is little external pressure to evolve the product any further and there is a quasi-monopoly on the end product and all it's options. Similar to cars, even though we have $5 GPS receivers in bulk and $50 all-in-one GPS devices retail with lifetime map support, the built-in GPS option for a car is still $500 (or more) while all they do is just pop in a GPS receiver on the CAN (or similar) bus.
  
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9. Re:Fishy... by nomel · 2012-05-21 06:15 · Score: 1
  
  Speckle interferometry? Mid infrared laser with a piezo shift mirror and a decent resolution ccd?
10. Re:Fishy... by nomel · 2012-05-21 06:25 · Score: 1
  
  I'd agree, but this would have to be something to do with infrared, otherwise it wouldn't work in the evening. I have trouble believing much information would be present in an infrared-only illuminated hand, although, the numbers they quote could be best case (well lit room with wrinkle hands).
11. Re:Fishy... by Missing.Matter · 2012-05-21 06:42 · Score: 1
  
  see what (amateur) robots can do these days merely on "sight".
  Sorry, even the best applications of vision in robotics at the top universities and companies in the world are not this accurate. A sensor as accurate as they're claiming should be able to measure the height of a grain of salt sitting on a table top.
12. Re:Fishy... by 91degrees · 2012-05-21 06:46 · Score: 1
  
  There are techniques. The hands image could just be an application designed with hands in mind and makes an assumption about shape. For hands passing over each other, there are various computer vision techniques that can make good inferences.
13. Re:Fishy... by Captain+Hook · 2012-05-21 07:28 · Score: 2
  
  medical devices, even those that are not going to be touching patients require a lot of safety testing, especially if this thing is spraying EM all over the place potentially interfering with medical devices in the operating room.
  
  They maybe going for the low hanging fruit to get some revenue flowing in while they develop the device for more safety critical applications.
  
  --
  These comments are my personal opinions and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of the other voices in my head.
14. Re:Fishy... by vlm · 2012-05-21 07:51 · Score: 1
  
  Your machines are 100k+ as you said yourself, your boss is not going to throw those out within 3 years and those machines have no place for such newfangled tech yet.
  no no. A mill is kind of a basic unit of production machine and those cost $100K (well, it varies from $5K up to ...) and a digitizer/taster probe costs about $400, plus or minus software, etc. Currently you stick a $400 probe and some software in a $100K mill and hours later your part has been probed a million times (maybe literally) and you have a giant computer file of coordinates that can be run thru limit checks or maybe imported into CAD program, whatever.
  The point being that they don't mind hours of labor and hundreds of thousands of dollars of capital investment... If there is a way to do it instantly for $70 or even $7000 they'll whip out the corporate credit card so fast you'll hear a sonic boom. If machine shop X doesn't buy it, Y will, and X will shortly go out of business... Also CAD/CAM is arguably much more modern and high tech than most other businesses.
  
  There are many situations where 'sight' only may not be a good fit (high speed metal cutting).
  But thats the whole point I'm trying to make... 10 microns is usually good enough for that kind of work, and the existing 10 micron "class of solution" are only around 3 orders of magnitude more expensive than this "new tech" solution.
  
  --
  "Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
15. Re:Fishy... by vlm · 2012-05-21 07:58 · Score: 1
  
  A sensor as accurate as they're claiming should be able to measure the height of a grain of salt sitting on a table top.
  Thats a pretty good estimate ... isn't this sensor being claimed at 10 microns and a typical sieve size for table salt is around 70 microns?
  I can one up measuring one crystal. If this sensor exists, you should be able to dump out a salt shaker on a two seater restaurant table around 4 x 2 feet, snap one "photo" or whatever you call the data gathering in a fraction of a full motion video second, and then computationally analyze the location and surface condition/damage of each individual salt crystal (well, other than the ones buried in the pile). 7 pixels per crystal should be good enough to find chipped salt crystals.
  Like the "sand reckoner" if should be able to tell you how many grains of sand there are on a beach... by counting each one.
  Actually, if this sensor exists, and it does kinect style full motion video cap, you should be able to dump the salt shaker out, and as the crystals are falling, analyze each individual crystal and chart its trajectory in real time as it falls to the table...
  
  --
  "Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
16. Re:Fishy... by Missing.Matter · 2012-05-21 09:23 · Score: 1
  
  Here's another number for how ridiculous the resolution claim is. They claim it works in a 8ft^3 volume... let's assume the 2D projection of this is a 2ftx2ft plane. This is equivalent to an area of 371612160000 microns^2. That's 300 billion microns^2, or 3x10^11 points of data. So we're talking about processing a point cloud on the order of hundreds of billions of points in real time over USB. How realistic is that? Let's assume they're using USB 3.0, with a theoretical maximum transmission speed of 5 Gbit/s. This means every second the sensor is able to send a maximum of 5x10^9 bits of data to the computer. If each point were only 1 bit (0/1), then the sensor would be able to deliver a full scan to the computer at .016 Hz. This means in the absolute best case scenario you'll get a full scan once every minute. With real world data transmission speeds and actual data (not just 0/1 bits) this update rate is going to suffer significantly. If we assume each measurement has double precision (that's 16 bits of data for every point in the cloud) the full point cloud comes out to 5.9x10^12 bits for transmission. That's an update rate of .0008 Hz at USB 3.0 theoretical maximum transfer speed, or a full scan every 1180 seconds (20 minutes).
  This claim just doesn't hold up.
17. Re:Fishy... by Missing.Matter · 2012-05-21 09:51 · Score: 1
  
  All three of those links are completely unrelated to computer vision systems in robotics. The first is a link to a picture taken with an AFM, the second is a very small camera with obviously terrible resolution (20x20px), and the third (posted below), is of another completely different instrument. And I guarantee you all three instruments cost tens of thousands of dollars.
18. Re:Fishy... by thoughtfulbloke · 2012-05-21 13:05 · Score: 1
  
  >I'm having trouble understanding exactly what kinds of technology this device is using to obtain accuracy
  
  Handwavium?
19. Re:Fishy... by hitchhacker · 2012-05-21 16:33 · Score: 1
  
  As with seismic data, they might only emit with one device and the rest are a passive array of receivers. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reflection_seismology#Marine_survey_acquisition_.28streamer.29
20. Re:Fishy... by jovius · 2012-05-21 17:21 · Score: 1
  
  There wouldn't be if each signal is given a unique code or pattern.
As long as we have windows.... by Anonymous Coward · 2012-05-21 04:50 · Score: 5, Funny

... i need exactly ONE GESTURE to communicate with it.
Chopsticks by Walterk · 2012-05-21 04:50 · Score: 1

Very considerate to show that you can play Angry Birds with chopsticks. I look forward to being able to play an alternative "Angry Birds" with my single chopstick..

--

"If anyone needs me, I'm in the angry dome."
And the Hulk .. by OzPeter · 2012-05-21 04:51 · Score: 2

Will be the only one around with enough upper body strength to continuously use such a device day in and day out

I should really book mark that Penny Arcade strip.

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now imagine a flick of the fingers by Chirs · 2012-05-21 04:53 · Score: 5, Insightful

I would love to be able to lean back, rest my elbows on my chair armrest, forearms vertical, and control stuff by moving my fingers around. Much less strain on the wrists.,since the hands would be directly over them and in a neutral position.
1. Re:now imagine a flick of the fingers by jaymemaurice · 2012-05-21 17:26 · Score: 1
  
  except now all your chairs can have a pseudo built in trackpad/keypad... and the size and position of "keys" configured for your hands...
  
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  120 characters ought to be enough for anyone
2. Re:now imagine a flick of the fingers by mwvdlee · 2012-05-21 23:17 · Score: 1, Funny
  
  oy eo;; mrbrt eptl/
  (sorry, my chair was a quarter of an inch from where the motion detector was calibrated).
  
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3. Re:now imagine a flick of the fingers by ArsenneLupin · 2012-05-22 02:05 · Score: 1
  
  Much less strain on the wrists
  But much more strain on your arms and shoulders. Just imagine yourself holding your arms up all day long while still moving your hands in a very precise motion... your back must hurt like hell at the end of the day. Or mine certainly would...
4. Re:now imagine a flick of the fingers by mcgrew · 2012-05-22 03:49 · Score: 1
  
  Most people's jobs are far more physically demanding. Hold a pretty damned heavy nail gun all day, hell even a fry cook is on his feet moving his arms around all day! factory workers, welders, machinists, folks running cash registers... gees, dude, how weak are you??
  
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stock pump by Anonymous Coward · 2012-05-21 04:53 · Score: 3, Interesting

Just want to mention, these guys are currently funding up and looking to put a shine on their company. With the secrecy all you're getting is their own spin, no actual info, and they are very much doing it do create buzz for their funding.
This is not a tech story, it's a stock pump in disguise. I'm not saying it's a pump and dump, but this is a pump for sure. It seems to be aligned with the Facebook IPO news to try to catch more ears.
I say this because I heard this news last week through my parents, who have an aggressive stockbroker who brings them endless "get rich quick" stock pumps. And for some reason they don't get rid of the guy even though he's pretty much all the worst things you can think of in a stockbroker. Must be a friend of the family.
1. Re:stock pump by Missing.Matter · 2012-05-21 04:57 · Score: 4, Insightful
  
  I agree... they're releasing absolutely zero tangible information about the product while accepting pre-orders and developer applications. Seems like they want to bring their investors some numbers on how many people are interested. It remains to be seen if this $70 price is even realistic... and for that matter exactly what kind of technology this actually is.
8 cubic feet... by internerdj · 2012-05-21 04:58 · Score: 1

How big an area does Kinect cover again? Nice on the precision, but the effective area is about my seated computing space.
1. Re:8 cubic feet... by MozeeToby · 2012-05-21 05:01 · Score: 1
  
  How big an area does Kinect cover again? Nice on the precision, but the effective area is about my seated computing space.
  Which is probably the area they're trying to shoot for.
2. Re:8 cubic feet... by Missing.Matter · 2012-05-21 05:02 · Score: 1
  
  FOV is 57 horizontally and 43, with a maximum range of about 20 ft. I don't know how much volume that is, but it's significantly larger than 8 cubic feet.
3. Re:8 cubic feet... by internerdj · 2012-05-21 05:19 · Score: 1
  
  Yeah. Very cool, specifically for someone like me who regularly works with 3D visuals. However with all this hype about it being a Kinect competitor, I'd say there is a substantial difference between this and a kinect. That is much the same way that my bedroom TV is cheaper and has resolution as fine as my living room tv.
4. Re:8 cubic feet... by vlm · 2012-05-21 05:23 · Score: 3, Interesting
  
  FOV is 57 horizontally and 43, with a maximum range of about 20 ft. I don't know how much volume that is, but it's significantly larger than 8 cubic feet.
  Come on /., lets do some redneck engineering estimating with VLM down here at the high tech redneck (server) farm.
  Lets wiggle your numbers to something smaller because I'm a lazy SOB and assume kinect only gives you a square of 40 degrees and only 1 foot deep precisely at 20 feet. Kin we all take a swig of grannie's recipe outta mason jar even tho its kinda early in the morning and agree that my grotesque simplification is a profound lower bound? Its going to be way huger than this estimate.
  So 40 degrees up and down is really two rather acute right triangles of 20 degrees at the pointy end and, as you say, 20 feet on the adjacent side. Essentially we wanna solve for opposite side, times two because there's two right triangles, and square it to get square feet, and call it good because we're only looking at the one foot wide layer at 20 feet away (the true volume is way the heck larger, this is just a lower bound).
  OK, sstill with me here? trig, um, 30 years ago, thats what "soh cah toa" tangent is opposite over adjacent. So tangent 20 deg = x/20. Tangent of 20 degrees is about a third... you can either trust me on that because I'm old, or you can GOOG it. Some basic algebra shows 1/3 = x/20 is the same as 1/3*20 = x in other words its a bit more than 6 feet, 6 * 3 being about 18 and 6*4 being too big for 20. So times 2 because there's two triangles means 12 feet. 12 feet up n down by 12 feet left n right at that 20 foot distance is 12*12=144 square feet. So we know it looks at the whole volume (does it?) so considering just that 1 foot shell as a minimum is 144 cubic feet.
  Lets think backwards here to check. So if I imagine around a 40 degree triangle flying outta my eye, and look 20 feet away, can I see the ceiling? Yeah, I guess so. So I probably did the math correctly.
  As a ridiculous upper bound, the upper bound of this pyramid must be smaller than a cube of 12*12*20 feet, right? So its less than 144*20 = 1440*2 = 2880 cubic feet.
  So a kinect looks at between 144 and 2880 cubic feet in volume. This took an old engineering mind about 10 seconds to figure out and 5 minutes to type. In summary yeah its way the heck larger than 8 cuft probably 2 orders of magnitude bigger. But not 3 orders of magnitude bigger.
  
  --
  "Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
5. Re:8 cubic feet... by cupantae · 2012-05-21 05:49 · Score: 1
  
  all this hype about it being a Kinect competitor
  Can you point me to that, please? I can't find it.
  
  --
  --
6. Re:8 cubic feet... by Mike+Buddha · 2012-05-21 12:14 · Score: 1
  
  Looking at pictures from a different article, this device appears to sit on the ground in front of the keyboard and faces up. The 8 cubic feet is probably the area directly in front of the keyboard between the screen and the user.
  
  --
  by Mike Buddha -- Someday the mountain might get him, but the law never will.
Hate to admit it ... by Compaqt · 2012-05-21 04:59 · Score: 1

I guess this means Mark Shuttleworth was prescient about Unity !#
(Sorry, Mark.)

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Is 2 mm accurate enough? by cpu6502 · 2012-05-21 05:00 · Score: 3, Interesting

0.01 mm * 200 woudl be 2 mm for Kinect. That seems accurate enough to me. It's pretty darn small.

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1. Re:Is 2 mm accurate enough? by akzeac · 2012-05-21 05:46 · Score: 1
  
  Eh, it depends. The Kinect has only about 1090 depth values between 30 cm and 10 meters. Most of the values are concentrated in the low range.
  So yes, while at close depths you'll get a 2 mm resolution, at greater depths the discretization error becomes much higher.
  Of course, the main problem is not so much the resolution, but the noise and the image size. At 1.5 meters it gets really hard to track a hand because you get very few samples with unpredictable (noisy) values. You also lose samples (or even worse, get wrong values) around the edges because of registration issues and shadows between the infrared camera and the projector (plus the registration and shadows to the RGB camera if you need the colors). And since fingers are relatively thin, edges are pretty much everywhere. Estimating five fingers under these conditions is pretty hard.
2. Re:Is 2 mm accurate enough? by 91degrees · 2012-05-21 06:51 · Score: 1
  
  It depends what you're doing. For coarse gestures, it's great. But this seems to allow mouse like precision.
3. Re:Is 2 mm accurate enough? by Mike+Buddha · 2012-05-21 12:16 · Score: 1
  
  You just have to keep your hands very still for it to be useful. 2mm is close enough for mouse work.
  
  --
  by Mike Buddha -- Someday the mountain might get him, but the law never will.
Developer link by FTWinston · 2012-05-21 05:06 · Score: 1

It's 404ing, for now. http://live.leapmotion.com/developer-kit-application
1. Re:Developer link by Matheus · 2012-05-21 05:09 · Score: 1
  
  Not just that... seems lots of the links off the home page are 404. Shady or sloppy or just not ready yet? /.-fail.
2. Re:Developer link by chill · 2012-05-21 05:21 · Score: 5, Interesting
  
  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
  
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Website half gone by chill · 2012-05-21 05:08 · Score: 2

Most of their website seems to not exist. The "about", "blog" and "pre-order" pages are no longer there -- if they ever were. Google's cache doesn't seem to have them. Nor does the Internet Archive have a copy.
The domain was registered with GoDaddy on April 12 of this year. The domain of the registrant (ocuspec.com) redirects to leapmotion.com.

--
Learning HOW to think is more important than learning WHAT to think.
1. Re:Website half gone by malignant_minded · 2012-05-21 06:54 · Score: 2
  
  http://techcrunch.com/2011/06/10/ocuspec-raises-1-3m-from-andreessen-and-others-to-build-an-affordable-kinect/
  that was posted like a year ago, i searched through slashdot for OcuSpec but got nothing. maybe there was an article a while ago but it appears to have gone unnoticed for a year here.
  from the website:
  How do I pre-order a LEAP?
  We have a limited number available for our first shipment this winter. Early birds catch the worm – so click here to order. We won’t charge you until the product is ready to ship.
  What are the tech specifications for the LEAP?
  TBD.
  
  Huh? how are specs to be determined if you have them?
2. Re:Website half gone by 0x537461746943 · 2012-05-21 07:51 · Score: 1
  
  Probably because they have to determine how to make a real device now that they have an empty box on the table and their movement that was choreographed to sync up with the computer display video. There is way too little info on the website to make me believe it is even slightly a real demo.
There should be an Activator comparison by zakkudo · 2012-05-21 05:10 · Score: 2

It would have been far more interesting if they compared the accuracy to the SEGA Activator if not for the pure nostalgic value.
For the people who don't remember the activator:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ql-UZv3AS-E
(And yes, the guy with the activator beat the snot out of the guy with te controller in the video. :-))
Pre-order ... for early next year... maybe by thesandbender · 2012-05-21 05:21 · Score: 3, Insightful

$70 pre-order for "expected" delivery next year. Article short on details, long on promises. A website where many of the pages don't function. I think I'm better off buying a 2-3 shares of Facebook.
This is better then minority report by Karmashock · 2012-05-21 05:24 · Score: 1

Remember those gloves he wore?... well, we don't need them. Amazing technology.
I wonder if it will kill the mouse.

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$70 for preorder? by Compaqt · 2012-05-21 05:43 · Score: 2

Usually, they give a discount for pre-orders.
But their website says it'll be $69.99 retail. So why should I pre-order for that amount?

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Someone watched me play LOTRO this weekend... by BMOC · 2012-05-21 05:43 · Score: 1

And asked me if these games work better on touch screens... I found myself for the first time questioning the use of keyboard/mouse combination for MMORPGs.
Surely Slashdot has links to someone who has thought of this?

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Could this be used to replace touchscreens? by mark-t · 2012-05-21 05:49 · Score: 2

Detecting not only when you physically touch the screen, but also being able to detect where your hands or fingers are even *near* the screen? There could be some seriously cool applications for that.

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File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
I might be wrong... by Lisandro · 2012-05-21 05:56 · Score: 4, Informative

... but this has "fake" written all over it.
If they really managed to create an device that tracks multiple objects, in 3D (even when stacked), and with a resolution of 10 microns they won't just revolutionize computers and gaming. I've used industrial sensing devices that cost 100x as much and aren't even remotely capable of such feats.
1. Re:I might be wrong... by Hillgiant · 2012-05-21 06:17 · Score: 3, Informative
  
  ... but this has "fake" written all over it.
  If they really managed to create an device that tracks multiple objects, in 3D (even when stacked), and with a resolution of 10 microns they won't just revolutionize computers and gaming. I've used industrial sensing devices that cost 100x as much and aren't even remotely capable of such feats.
  ^^^ 100% THIS ^^^
  For the moment, I am assuming that the original reporter misunderstood the measurement. 0.01mm is REALLY SMALL. We aren't talking about tracking hands or fingers, we are talking about tracking the hairs on said hands and/or fingers.
  
  --
  -
2. Re:I might be wrong... by Missing.Matter · 2012-05-21 06:48 · Score: 2
  
  This is not a figure reported by a reporter; this is a figure reported on the Leap website: http://live.leapmotion.com/about/
  
  Just about the size of a flash drive, the Leap can distinguish your individual fingers and track your movements down to a 1/100th of a millimeter.
  AKA 10 microns. A human hair is about 100 microns. 10 microns is more along the size of a grain of pollen.
3. Re:I might be wrong... by Hillgiant · 2012-05-21 07:44 · Score: 1
  
  In my defense, wikipedia places a range on the human hair from 17 to 180 microns.
  The vendor's site was /.ed before. It currently does not claim a specific resolution. Just the relative improvement values of 100x and 200x.
  
  --
  -
4. Re:I might be wrong... by Missing.Matter · 2012-05-21 07:58 · Score: 1
  
  It currently does not claim a specific resolution. Just the relative improvement values of 100x and 200x.
  The link I posted above still contains the text which I also quoted above. It's still slashdotted but eventually came up. Here is the text of the full paragraph, emphasis mine:
  
  Say goodbye to your mouse and keyboard.
  
  Leap represents an entirely new way to interact with your computers. It’s more accurate than a mouse, as reliable as a keyboard and more sensitive than a touchscreen. For the first time, you can control a computer in three dimensions with your natural hand and finger movements.
  
  This isn’t a game system that roughly maps your hand movements. The Leap technology is 200 times more accurate than anything else on the market — at any price point. Just about the size of a flash drive, the Leap can distinguish your individual fingers and track your movements down to a 1/100th of a millimeter.
  
  This is like day one of the mouse. Except, no one needs an instruction manual for their hands.
But does it run Linux? by ron_ivi · 2012-05-21 06:03 · Score: 1

If it'll have F/OSS Linux drivers available at launch time, I'll pre-order one. Haven't touch windows for years, though.
Aw crap.... by mark-t · 2012-05-21 06:07 · Score: 3, Insightful

I was really excited to see this kind of technology until I saw the following on their website:

Leap Motion technology is a breakthrough in computer interaction, using a patented mathematical approach to 3D....
Patented? Mathematical? It's bad enough that companies are patenting software that is just obscured math, but now they are effing patenting mathematics itself????
This has so many levels of wrong written all over it, I can't begin to explain...

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File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
1. Re:Aw crap.... by chill · 2012-05-21 06:43 · Score: 1
  
  In the world of encryption, the math behind RSA was patented. So is the math behind IDEA, IIRC. This isn't new.
  
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2. Re:Aw crap.... by mark-t · 2012-05-21 06:53 · Score: 1
  
  Math is not supposed to be patented though. Mathematics qualifies as an abstract idea, and abstract ideas are *explicitly* excluded from patentability (as are laws of nature and physical phenomena). It just gets muddier when somebody is able to demonstrate a practical application to such an abstract idea.
  Next thing you know, somebody's going to be patenting trigonometry because of its application in determining the distance of objects using just two reference points and a third point on the object.
  
  --
  File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
3. Re:Aw crap.... by 91degrees · 2012-05-21 06:55 · Score: 1
  
  They're not patenting mathematics. That's not possible. They're patenting applications for the mathematics.
Re:What's wrong with soldering circuits? by SilentStaid · 2012-05-21 07:37 · Score: 1

Why do we need all these fucking replies? I guess most people still haven't figured out how to form an original joke.
One way it might work. by Animats · 2012-05-21 07:56 · Score: 1

They have a little wireless device sitting below the screen that supposedly can sense the position of individual fingers of a hand above it. That tells us something.
One interesting option is using the monitor's speakers for ultrasound and putting some microphones in the pickup. Now you have two emitters some distance apart, and some number of detectors close together. That configuration is powerful enough to image. See "One-handed gesture recognition using ultrasonic Doppler sonar" People have been fooling around with this sort of thing for years, but nobody has really nailed the problem yet. It's similar to the problem of emulating bat sonar. Part of the trick, I expect, is that the system measures both effects on the direct path from speaker to microphone and on the path which involves a reflection from the screen. That gives you the distance-from-screen information.
You probably could get 0.2mm of resolution if you sampled the microphones at 2MHz or so. Bats have roughly that resolution.
The Apple Thunderbolt monitor they're using has two high-frequency speakers, a subwoofer, a microphone, and a camera. It's not clear how much of that complement they're using for positional data.
Will it register obscene gestures? by G3ckoG33k · 2012-05-21 08:33 · Score: 1

Will it register obscene gestures, and send them to the Vatican?
Brrr... Albino Opus Dei knocking on your door...
1. Re:Will it register obscene gestures? by robsku · 2012-05-23 19:42 · Score: 1
  
  And right after I had posted that, I realize, no wanking either:
  http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/05/21/notre-dame-obama-administration-birth-control-mandate_n_1533147.html
  "Roman Catholic dioceses, schools and other groups sued the Obama administration Monday in eight states and the District of Columbia over a federal mandate that most employers provide workers free birth control as part of their health insurance."
  WTF?!
  Only in USA... OMG, they seriously mumble stuff about religious freedom - this has nothing to do with freedom and everything with religious nutjobs controlling others.
  
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  In capitalist USA corporations control the government.
Quit whining by Animats · 2012-05-21 09:33 · Score: 1

Quit whining about patents. If they're doing it the way I think they're doing it (see previous post), they've solved a very tough problem in acoustic processing. That's a significant invention. Without a patent, it would be ripped off by game console manufacturers and TV makers.
1. Re:Quit whining by mark-t · 2012-05-21 11:37 · Score: 1
  
  I have no problem with patents... I *DO* have a problem with patents being applied to things that the patent system explicitly says it's not supposed to be applied to: natural laws, physical phenomena, and abstract ideas.
  Mathematics is almost all (if not entirely) abstract ideas.... that you can sometimes do useful things with it simply follows from the usefulness of logic itself.
  
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  File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
Hardware is just frozen software and... by crovira · 2012-05-21 09:41 · Score: 1

software is just defrosted hardware.
Its possible to take ANY algorithm and cast it in silicon.
That was one of the tenets in the creation of Forth by Charles Moore.
It would be possible to implement this using a FAST Arduino microcontroller, maybe with some extra memory, and a few (2+) good (>40kHz) sonar sensors.

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MSBPodcast.com The opinions expressed here are my own. If you don't like 'em... Think up your own stuff.
1. Re:Hardware is just frozen software and... by Missing.Matter · 2012-05-21 10:14 · Score: 1
  
  Software maps to hardware, but hardware does not map to software. You can't code up a laser beam.
Of course it does. Otherwise its "Deus ex machine" by crovira · 2012-05-21 12:41 · Score: 1

Nor can you hardwire a targeting and firing sequence without some form of cybernetic feedback mechanism and a state machine.
But the distinctions are harder to make than you think.
Where do you cut off the hardware and cut over the state machine?
Just because a state machine requires some initialization upon activation doesn't mean that it can't be implemented in hardware.
Just because you were implemented in wetware doesn't mean that you didn't develop a will.

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MSBPodcast.com The opinions expressed here are my own. If you don't like 'em... Think up your own stuff.
hardware processing before USB transmission by Chirs · 2012-05-21 14:36 · Score: 1

If they preprocess the data and only transmit the location of the points of interest (say density transitions, which correspond to surfaces), the bandwidth requirement drops substantially. At about 50 seconds into the ExtremeTech video it shows what appears to be some sort of point cloud corresponding to the surface of the hand(s). I assume this is pretty close to the raw data sent to the computer.
Video by __aarvde6843 · 2012-05-22 03:50 · Score: 1

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=_d6KuiuteIA
Musical applications? by Dusty101 · 2012-05-22 03:50 · Score: 1

Off the top of my head, I could think of a few musical applications for this:
- Virtual theremin-type things.Jean Michel Jarre wannabes could have a field day with this: you could use it for the introduction of additional expression, modulation, etc. for non-contact instruments such as laser harps.
- Training orchestra conductors. We could have software that plays multitracked orchestral music, and the gesture tracking could control the balance, etc. between the various sections of the orchestra. I believe that EPCOT used to have something along these lines many years ago (albeit much more primitive) involving a set of light beams.
- Quick switching between electric guitar effects setups, etc.
There are probably many others too.