Motion Tracking - Sci-Fi Meets Real World Technology

Techies will still remember that famous scene in Minority Report (Steven Spielberg's 2002 film featuring Tom Cruise as a cop under investigation for murder) where Cruise uses wireless data gloves and hand signals to sort through evidence on a giant screen at police headquarters.

Recently Gesture Studios CEO Kevin Parent, brought this scene to real life when he demonstrated Gesture’s newest motion sensor technology. Standing about 10 feet from a wall-size screen, using only his gloved hands, he swiftly sorted through images at an incredible speed, spinning 3D objects in space, snatching bullet points, and dragging them across the screen all with the motion of his hands. "You just put on the gloves and go," Parent explains. 

The similarities to Minority Report are no coincidence: Gesture Studios is the brainchild of Massachusetts Institute of Technology wunderkind John UnderKoffler, who helped Spielberg's production team design the scene in the movie. 

This spring the Las Vegas McCarren International Airport will set up large plasma screens with a motion-tracking component that lets advertisers bring pedestrians into their commercials. When you walk past a car ad, for example, the vehicle might move at the same speed you're walking. When you turn to look at the driver, he'll turn to look at you, and you'll be staring into an image of your own face. Scenes like these once seemed straight out of a futuristic movie, but will become increasingly more common. 

This technology has the ability to eventually replace keyboards, the mouse, remote controls and more. Motion capture is also starting to transform how businesses market, design and manufacture products, allowing workers to collaborate in shared virtual environments- even when they are thousands of miles apart. Potential applications are wide and varied.

Motion tracking has all the marks of a disruptive technology, permeating the scene in unexpected ways. Sherry Turkle, a clinical psychologist and professor at MIT, talks about "the mirroring of body motion, and of course the subtle things like hand gestures, or the way someone characteristically cocks his head before speaking." Captured and incorporated into business and entertainment systems, "these motions will give us a much greater sense of connection with our online selves. The virtual will seem much closer to the real," she says. Imagine how you'll feel when your avatar in Second Life smiles back from your computer screen just the way you smile. Posted by Rebecca Sato.

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Comments

[Sleevum Lamdie]

What I'd love to do is get in a fight with one of those futuristic advertisements. I wonder what would happen if the advertisement beat me up because I started swinging at it. Could I sue the advertiser?

But what would happen if YOU won? ; )
Best, Casey

[patel hiren]

i want more information about motion sensor technology.