Technology has allowed us to move away from interfacing the computer with just keyboard and mice. The advent of touchscreen gave birth to a plethora of new applications and games that uses touch interface. Now, gesture recognition is the latest fad. The Kinect is an excellent example. It has two cameras, so it is stereoscopic – able to detect depth – like the human eye.
One of my friends got a Dr. Who sonic screw driver remote control, which is basically a gesture based remote control. It is quite interesting to play with, but if you’re not a Dr. Who fan, it’s just a very expensive universal remote control.
There are also other upcoming technologies in the gesture realm. Interested readers can search on websites like kickstarters for similar product. The following are some of them.
Myo – https://www.thalmic.com/myo/
Leap motion – https://www.leapmotion.com/
Wisee – http://wisee.cs.washington.edu/
http://www.nbcnews.com/technology/wi-fi-your-home-can-track-your-moves-xbox-kinect-6C10194118
The last one is of some interest because using WiFi signal other than to transfer data, which is unheard of. There has been some research in using wifi signals to track vision.
http://www.businessinsider.com/researchers-can-see-through-walls-with-wi-vi-2013-6
These new concepts have raised some privacy alarm. Because WiFi devices are ubiquitous and the signal information is free to access, people are concern that it makes spying on people easier. I think that at the moment it’s still too early to comment on the potential of using these technique to spy on people. However, this new development is certainly interesting to me.
