The hardware in Mac Funamizu’s gesture-controlled light switch would be very, very simple—after all, it’s just a trackpad. But it’s the input methods that make this exciting: just as laptop trackpads can track gestures for scrolling, this light switch would parse them to control up a roomful of lights, either together or in unison. The lights are mapped onto the pad as they are positioned in the room, and a simple sliding motion toward or away from a specific light would brighten or dim it individually. For maximum light-dimming suavity, the circular gesture function takes control of every bulb at once. galleryPost('lightpadconcept', 3, '');
Nokia has always held the line that the reason their top-end N-series has yet to see any sign of a touch-based interface was because they were simply waiting to “do it the right way.” (The company’s first all-touch device, the 5800, was made official only a few months ago). All’s fair there, but when I asked Nokia’s Chief Designer Alastair Curtis this week in New York what exactly the “right way” entails for Nokia’s more internationally focused phones, the answer was, of course, “wait and see!” What did come up indirectly, though, was mention of gesture control for mobile phones–something a recent Nokia patent seems to indicate as well.
We’ve seen gesture controls in gadgets before, but Mgestyk Technologies wants to bring them to your home PC. Using only a 3D camera and proprietary software, the Mgestyk gesture control system is able to capture small hand movements and translate them into commands. These commands can be applied to almost any windows application, including video games. Judging from the clips they have on their site, the system seems to work as advertised, though there does appear to be a little lag. Pricing is expected to be within the range of a high end webcam which by our estimates is around $US150. At the moment there are no details about when this will be available, but you can sign up on their mailing list to get an update when it releases. [Mgestyk via Engadget]
Alps Electronics has decided to take the occasionally annoying sensitivity of some capacitive trackpads to a new extreme, demoing a technology that can accurately sense fingers without coming in direct contact with them. The system is able to sense movements at an admittedly modest range of 3cm, from which distance users can control applications with a range of gestures.
newVideoPlayer("/igorenje_gizmodo.flv", 520, 410,""); We covered the Gorenje Made for iPod fridge and the iGorenje home appliance program at IFA last Sunday. I’ve spent some time with both and I like what I see, although I have some doubts about how practical this can be.
newVideoPlayer("/qosmiowave_gizmodo.flv", 520, 410,""); To be honest, I was going to headline this article “Toshiba Magic Waving Handy-Spanky-Fingery Gestures Are Perfect for Harry Potter and Online Porn Users,” but I decided against it at the last minute for obvious reasons, even when I had two powerful arguments in favour. You will understand them when you watch Helga–the Good Toshiba Witch of West Berlin–and myself in the video:
The MEDUSA crowd control ray gun we reported on earlier this month sounded like some pretty amazing–and downright scary–technology. Using the microwave auditory effect, the beam, in theory, would have put sounds and voice-like noises in your head, thereby driving you away from the area. Crowd control via voices in your head. Sounds cool. However, it turns out that the beam would actually kill you before any of that happy stuff started taking place, most likely by frying or cooking your brain inside your skull. Can you imagine if this thing made it out into the field? Awkward!
Touchscreens are great, but for many of us nothing beats old fashioned tactile controls. That seems to be one of the reasons why Lyndsay Williams of Girton Labs is in the process of developing SenseSurface–a system that allows users to stick working knobs to on-screen virtual controls. Apparently, the magnetic knobs can be placed anywhere on an LCD because the movement is picked up by a “unique sensing surface” attached behind the screen. It seems fairly unnecessary, but I’m sure that there are practical applications for this for music and graphics fields–or anyone who is tired of smudging up a touchscreen. A video of SenseSurface in action is available after the break.
TUAW’s tipsters tell it that, based on code found in the latest iPhone SDK beta, Apple’s working on an app called iControl to hook up with iTunes libraries. Their guess is that it’ll enable your iPhone to connect wirelessly to your iTunes and play back music, videos and podcasts (supposedly on the phone). That’s interesting and all, but we’re hoping it’s more of an actual “controller”, as specified in TUAW’s headline and image. This way we can use the iPhone as a remote to adjust playback on our iTunes and Apple TVs. This is the one that makes sense to us. [TUAW]
The Aurora Multimedia site says that their 6 or 12 button Waci-Pad is “ideal for wall or podium mounting,” we know exactly where we’re putting this—next to the our front door so we can switch on all our electronics when we enter the house (or off when we leave, but that never happens).
