Going through the motions

Leap Motion lets you drive your computer with finger gestures

There's a lot of focus on technology that makes access to computers more intuitive.  We're not expected to rely solely on a keyboard or a mouse now to make our devices respond to our commands.

Touchscreens made the keyboard redundant on tablets and smartphones.  Now gesture controlled operation is set to add more capability to the computer interface.

Using sensors to detect movement is nothing new.  We've been relying on this technology for many years in our motion detector alarm systems , in lighting systems that activate when you enter the room and in those floodlights you have to light up a dark path.  These systems are all fairly crude in that they are detecting heat and motion changes then triggering a single response - light a bulb or sound an alarm.

The new motion sensors for our computers are a bit smarter than that.  They are detecting intricate patterns of movement through Sudden Motion Sensor technology and using this to trigger one of many outcomes. Take a look at this technology from Hewlett-Packard in conjunction with San Francisco start-up, Leap Motion.  The sensors apparently detect movement  across all of your fingers with amazing precision.  HP has such confidence in Leap Motion that they will be initially shipping the sensor units packaged with some of their devices and then integrating them into new models.

Science fiction becomes science future (image from Minority Report)

What they need now is for the community to get behind this and for designers to build applications that deploy the Leap Motion technology.  The're off to a great start with some 50,000 developers already requesting toolkits.

How long will it be before we can drive our computers like Tom Cruise did so effectively in Minority Report?  With innovations like this, maybe not too long at all.  

Leap Motion logo

HP and Leap Motion innovation for gesture control (Stuff)

HP hopes gesture control will revitalise the PC market (Bloomberg)

Leap Motion-enabled devices shipping with Airspace (eWeek)

The Sudden Motion Sensor