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Inventors Use Hand Gestures To Kill the Mouse (and Keyboard)

by Tom Conlon on September 19, 2007 at 05:39 PM


When Steven Spielberg and Tom Cruise's 'Minority Report' conquered theaters in 2002, the tech community went wild, not over the special effects used to make Cruise seem less like a stark-raving looney tune, but over the futuristic, motion-controlled computer interface he used in a few of the movie's key scenes.

Now, it seems were on the verge of making a million nerd dreams come true. At this week's TechCrunch40 expo, an exclusive, invite-only gathering of 40 technology startups, a company named Extreme Reality showed off its 3-D Human Interface product. The software uses a simple everyday Web cam to translate your movements into on-screen controls such as zooming, tilting, panning and cursor movement.

The above video shows the technology being used to play video games and move windows around in Windows XP. Though not shown, the demo at TechCrunch40 also showed the software navigating Google Maps.

While the thought of flailing our arms around to control a Windows computer is definitely less than appealing, we're salivating over the future that this technology promises to usher in.

From Crunch Gear

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Tags: future, graphics, GUI, interface, minority report, MinorityReport, operating system, OperatingSystem, osx, windows

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