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Giving Your Computer Interface the Finger
moon_unit2 writes "Tech Review has a story about a startup that's developed software capable of tracking not just hand movements but precise finger gestures. The setupm from 3Gear, requires two depth-sensing cameras (aka Kinects) at the top corners of your display. Then simply give your computer thumbs up — or whatever other gesture you might feel like — and it'll know what you're doing. The software is available for free while the product is in beta testing, if you want to give it a try."
Now that the computer overloards can measure how messy my desk is I better make the place look respectible!
Does this mean I need to dress up to use my computer now?
This would be really interesting interface if it had a library of American Sign Language gestures and fingerspelling capabilities.
For some reason my fountain pen doesn't work here.
With your bare hands?!?
I already have the webcam on my work laptop covered. I'll just tear off a couple of more pieces ...
When I'm viewing porn, the cursor will just be going all over the place.
Leap has a system coming in December that does this.
Does it support strangling gesture? When you are not content to just insult it. For when you want to wring the computer/software's neck because it is _pissing_ you off? Mostly caused by programs behaving differently/inconsistently for what I would consider standard operations. Or those "helpful" features that you have no clue where/how to turn them off.
not want a camera pointed at you just to use the computer?
Every time I use a keypad, touchscreen, or other computerized device outside of my own desktop or laptop, I use my longest finger as my pointing finger. This is a habit I picked up my father, who is a longtime computer engineer.
He and I both find that using the longest finger to control such devices is very cathartic.
You should turn signatures off.
...an immersion environment using a couple projectors behind you and the kinect sensors in front of you (like, in the corners of the room).
I had a portable projector setup at one point, for the ubergeeky flightsim pilot in me, which ran off of three laptops and two projectors, onto a pair of screens set at right angles to each other: I would be sat or stood at the midpoint of the hypoteneuse to get fairly brilliant very large and almost completely immersive FS experience. Also worked on Unreal Tournament and Quake. It's not quite the same on a pair of 15" Dell panels (yeah, tried it).
This could actually be the precursor to the Minority Report type interface, but without the glove. Yep, I'd like that.
Operation Guillotine is in effect.
Yeah, but can it know when I want to fuck your momma, so it can call her up for me without me having to ask. I don't like putting out work for yo mamma the hood rat. If she comes to me, though--AND SHE DOES--then what the hell.
I did use Ubuntu, till Unity then I gave not just the interface, but the entire OS the finger.
This would be something that I would assume the deaf would have a leg up on everyone.
have you seen my sig? there are many others like it but none that are the same
A combination of a HD camera and an infrared camera.
They showed several applications and you can register to receive a camera and the SDK, I think they are doing a $1M (or at least a lot) contest for the best application.
What happens when I wave my wang at it. Could have interesting uses in the pr0n industry.
Silence is a state of mime.
Finally we can play Strategema without those annoying finger cups. Kolrami is going DOWN this time!
I don't walk to talk to my computer or have to raise my arms in any way to interact with it. I am at the computer for my job 16+ hours a day and I like quiet and not-tired arms. Now a mind-reading interface would be useful if it were very accurate.
Why pay $300 for two Kinect cameras when Leap Motion already has this covered at $70
I picked up an optical touchscreen a while back. It was nifty and kinda gimmicky. Then my cat figure out that she could mess with the computer with her tail when I was grabbing a drink or in another room. Now the touchscreen USB cable is left unplugged. I foresee this having the same issue.
I know nobody cares, but people here should care because we are smart and can get things right.
Kinects are not the only depth-sensing cameras in the market, and therefore the phrase "aka Kinects" is incorrect. You should instead say "e.g. Kinects."
Since nobody is going to read this anyway I won't bother to explain why. But if you don't want to appear stupid before those who actually understand English semantics, look it up.
So can I have my keyboard-less-keyboard now please?
I know what you mean, it's a shame that keyboard only work for English.
An American company can program it for Americans, and everyone else can program it for themselves.
I think that in-air gesture recognition needs to be integrated with eye tracking so that the computer can map hand to screen object from the user's line of sight to the screen.
Otherwise, there always needs to be a "pointer" of some kind, a proxy, like a virtual hand or pen on the screen.
It does not need to be a fancy type of eye tracking that detects where your gaze is. It only needs to locate where the eyes are in space.
"We mustn't be caught by surprise by our own advancing technology" -- Aldous Huxley
They say that with this device you can have gestures without putting your hands away from the keyboard.
Well, seems that for that to be true your keyboard has to be on the top of your desk, not on the keyboard tray, where it is partially covered.
i wonder if it will be able to see the type of finger gesture, like if you flick the computer off in a joking way over some small frustration, it will be able to differentiate between that and a truly angry flick.
> Giving Your Computer Interface the Finger
Several weeks down the road:
Statistics Report
Gesture Classification
--------
0.0003% Giving The Finger
14.27% Using the mouse
23.42% Using the keyboard
62.28% Scratching vigorously
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
The accuracy might be good, but how accurately can you actually use this...?
Try putting your fingertip on a small item, did you get it right first time? Now try this when you cannot feel the object, and cannot see it in relation to your hand ?
Roll on the holographic display version of this ....
Puteulanus fenestra mortis
it seems finger isn't installed by default, and I'm terribly afraid of $udo. Will who suffice?
We've been testing a bunch of these gesture systems at my work and while they are all promising wonderful things and have jazzy looking videos, they are all still very hinky feeling in actual practice. We have a few different systems in our show room and no matter how simple we make the user interface we are trying to control, I can maybe get the right response 10% of the time - even with a much fancier camera than a Kinect. For ones that recognize gestures, you have to be super precise with your hand gesture and even then the system has a hard time recognizing the gesture.
We even developed one of our own "touchless" touch screens where the touch surface is about an inch above the screen and while that does not involve any kind of gesture recognition, it's awkward to use. It looks fantastic and so futuristic, but we sell almost none of them because they are not comfortable to operate with no touch feedback and sticking your hand up toward the screen without anything to rest it on.
I question whether these will catch on. Most of them involve waving your hands around in the air, which is an uncomfortable thing to do, not to mention silly. One system we have recognizes when you make a circle with your thumb and forefinger - it looks like you are making the jerk off gesture when you try to use it. I cannot imagine any professional environment where that's going to catch on, though I do understand why it's the easiest gesture to get a computer to recognize.
I think the tabletop kinds of screens are where it's at with these gesture interfaces, so that you can wave your hands around above a surface, but, how many people use a computer that way?