Minority Report Coming Soon

There's a bunch of companies working with 3D cameras and gesture/anatomy analysis, including of course Microsoft's Natal. Control of TVs with this technology seems the first best fit.

Comments

[ilovecomputers]

Still, didn't light pens teach us that using an interface, that requires you to keep your arm up, is a bad idea?

[Keith Lang]

Yes — which I why I think the TV is a perfect match for this — occasionally changing channel etc.

[Kelsey Higham]

The presentation felt to me like the standard "arranging and resizing photographs" demo of multitouch screens—it looks cool, but doesn't look that useful, and like ilovecomputers above says, there's the gorilla-arm problem.

When I think about it on my own, though, I can see the appeal. Having two hands whose position and finger arrangement work as input means interface designers can have the intuitiveness of the mouse, combined with the efficiency of keyboard shortcuts, combined with the rich interaction of multi-touch.

Plus, a computer interface that doesn't make the user look lazy? I've been waiting for this my whole social life!

I can't see any good reason for this technology to become popular outside of specialized professional software and video games, though. A TV remote seems much more intuitive to me, and harder to accidentally trigger. If it does end up controlling a TV, I think it'll be because it's attached to a game console that includes a DVD player.