Do you remember the scene from Minority Report with the interactive UI? Well, Pranav Mistry, nicknamed “Zombie”, a PhD student in the Fluid Interfaces Group at MIT’s Media Lab turned out a prototype of it in just three weeks. His prototype called “Sixth Sense” has been elected as the best innovation for 2009, from the Popular Science magazine.
‘SixthSense’ is a wearable gestural interface that augments the physical world around us with digital information and lets us use natural hand gestures to interact with that information.
How does it work?
Well, the best way to find out is to watch his presentation on the TEDindia conference, which he gave several days ago.
The true power of Sixth Sense lies on its potential to connect the real world with the Internet, and overlaying the information on the world itself. He is connecting our digital and physical worlds in a sense we can only imagine. Yet, he makes it look so simple!
What I consider as more important in his case, is the brilliance of the model he is employing to get the technology and the software into the market. He announced an open source platform release in near future, so that every gadget&software-maniac can develop upon the concept. He’s also promoting it as a cheap alternative to the more robust and commercialized interactive “surfaces”.
- One projector can save the effort of implementing an expensive multi-touch computers.
- One camera can be combined with revolutionary software to input extracted important data from the environment into a digital devise.
- Several sensors can follow human movement and create an interactive environment, whenever you are.
and yes, one man can make a difference!
Get ready for this one!
Just to give a perspective on this innovation, here are some developments in gesture control systems:
Gesture remote control iPhone/iPod and a Mac
Toshiba gesture recognition
Eye-movement recognition
Brain-to-brain communication
