I am very grateful that I had the opportunity to visit GestureTek, one of the leading companies in developing gesture recognition systems, and all of its currently available technologies.
The first thing that captured my attention was Illuminate Display, which is a glass panel that acts as a touch screen with the image projected from the projector that is hidden from users. Not only the stylish look of one such system made it attractive, but the simplicity of using a person’s hand gesture as an interactive method made the design intuitive and simple. This system has enriched kiosks with more interactivity. Therefore, more and more exhibitions have started to make use of this technology to attract visitors.
We also had the chance to experience gestxtreme games. A game system that is similar to the existing EyeToy where a player plays games using body motion as input. Player’s motion was tracked by a webcam to control and decide game actions and options. A more developed 3D environment was introduced in this system. One of the games was a flight simulator. A player controls the direction of the airplane in the game by shifting his/her body to the desired direction. The airplane would then avoid buildings and go through the directed route to complete the stage. Obviously, this way of game-playing is much more interactive and gives players a more realistic experience.
IREX system is a similar idea to gestxtreme, but for a different purpose. The speaker presented us this game system on the same screen where the gestxtreme was shown. Players also use their body movements to control game actions, but what’s different from gestxtreme was that more actions were involved. Games like soccer and volleyball were integrated into the experience. Players sometimes need to jump up or bend down to respond to the game. Therefore, it was mentioned by the speaker that IREX are being used not only for entertainment, but also for therapeutic treatment protocols.
GroundFX is a floor projection mainly for advertising. The system can display advertisements on almost any kind of surface. It responds to users’ body motion with animation and sound. When the tracking camera detects any motion, it triggers the system to generate animation that corresponds to the direction of the motion and the location of the moving object. Recently, we have seen more and more of these systems being applied in shopping centers. They are usually projected on the floor to create interaction with the crowd. The speaker told us that although it was first projected on the floor. Most countries in Asia do not like the idea of having their branding logos being stepped on by people. Due to this cultural difference, it was introduced to Asian countries with projection on the wall instead of on the floor.
Holopoint is yet another ground-breaking technology that can replace mouse control or touch screen in exhibitions and conference rooms. More than one tracking camera was used to track users’ gesture and position in space. Users move their hands inside a U-shaped panel to control content on the screen that is at a distance from the panel and the users. No actual physical contact with any surface was the advantage of this gesture-controlled system. It leaves the problem of unsanitary surface of traditional touch screens behind and gives users a more futuristic control that they enjoy in the process of using one such system.
Related links:
Wii Sports
http://wii.nintendo.com/software_wii_sports.html
Computer Vision Based Human-Computer Interaction
http://www.nada.kth.se/cvap/gvmdi/
Gesture Technology – technology from Minority Report in real life
http://www.videosift.com/story.php?id=7517&where=index
Gesture Recognition in Flash
http://www.gskinner.com/blog/archives/2005/03/gesture_recogni.html
Gesture Recognition
http://research.microsoft.com/~rcutler/gesture/gesture_recognition.htm
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