Meeting the need for an improved user interface

There are no hand mounted sensors. Sensors can be placed on or next to a monitor. Several sensor sets / interaction areas or modes can work at the same time. The hardware set-up is scalable, robust and compact. It could be fitted into a mobile phone.

Touchless human computer interaction - a brief history

Science fiction fans will remember a passage from The Hitchhikers Guide To The Galaxy; where Zaphod Beeblebrox (1) is trying to operate his on-ship stereo system touchlessly - with only limited success. In later years, Tom Cruise operating the computer system in "Minority Report" (2), has become a common point of reference for any person or company working with touchless or gestural tracking.

The idea of operating a computer with gestures has attracted attention from researchers, and not only novelists and film directors, for more than two decades now. The earliest works we've seen were those of Haflich and Burns at MIT (3), who used an ultrasonic reflection system for tracking the motion of a conductors hand. The conductors motion was tracked in two dimensions, and later used for tactus estimation for a computerized music system. It is interesting to note that the first people 'thinking touchlessly' were also those whose general interest was touchless operation of another device - an orchestra. It suggests that the creativity and foresight of a visionary sci-fi novelist is, perhaps, only rivaled by inspiration gained from real-world, first hand experiences.

Another inventive institution, the NASA, were among the first to take more concrete steps towards enabling real, fullscale, touchless user interfaces in later years. According to the patent (4) by John Vranish, virtually any operation known from established user interfaces, such as multi-digit tracking, advanced object manipulation and even word processing, could also be carried out in full 3D on a computer or a PDA, without wearing gloves, markers or stereovision systems. Why his inventive 3D display has not yet reached the marketplace remains an unanswered and intriguing question.

Today, dozens of companies and even more individual engineers are pursuing the dream of intuitive, simple and affordable touchless interaction between man and computer. The term "touchless" has become something of a buzzword in interface engineering. Gestural technologies are among several candidates for the position as the "next big thing" in human-computer interaction. This is happening at a time when multi-touch mobile phones has become a reality, and 3D interaction is becoming second nature for many gamers through the Nintendo Wii. Meanwhile, handwriting and speech recognition technologies are still, after decades of research, struggling to overcome their pattern recognition hurdles and establish themselves as the most natural way for a human to interact with a computer.

References:

(1) "The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy", Douglas Adams, 1979, Pan Books.

(2) "Minority Report" , 20th Century Fox, 2002

(3) "Following a conductor: The engineering of an input device", Haflich, F. and
M. Burns, In Proceedings of the International Computer Music Conference.
International Computer Music Association, 1983.

(4) "Three-dimensional interactive display", by John M. Vrahnish/NASA, US
Patent 2002/0000977 A1.