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Microsoft

Giving Your Computer Interface the Finger 63

Posted by samzenpus from the let-your-fingers-do-the-computing dept.
moon_unit2 writes "Tech Review has a story about a startup that's developed software capable of tracking not just hand movements but precise finger gestures. The setupm from 3Gear, requires two depth-sensing cameras (aka Kinects) at the top corners of your display. Then simply give your computer thumbs up — or whatever other gesture you might feel like — and it'll know what you're doing. The software is available for free while the product is in beta testing, if you want to give it a try."

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Giving Your Computer Interface the Finger More

Giving Your Computer Interface the Finger

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  • Hmm, I may have to clean my desk... (Score:5, Funny)

    by schwep ( 173358 ) on Wednesday October 03, 2012 @08:24PM (#41544671)

    Now that the computer overloards can measure how messy my desk is I better make the place look respectible!

    Does this mean I need to dress up to use my computer now?

    • Re:Hmm, I may have to clean my desk... (Score:5, Funny)

      by plover ( 150551 ) on Wednesday October 03, 2012 @08:33PM (#41544739) Homepage Journal

      Now that the computer overloards can measure how messy my desk is I better make the place look respectible!

      Does this mean I need to dress up to use my computer now?

      Pants are optional, but recommended for you.

      • Re: (Score:3, Funny)

        by Soft Cosmic Rusk ( 1211950 )
        Yeah, it might interpret it as a "thumbs up"... Come to think of it, that interpretation would probably be correct anyway.

      • Geeks can do better! (Score:1)

        by Anonymous Coward

        I know nobody cares, but people here should care because we are smart and can get things right.

        Kinects are not the only depth-sensing cameras in the market, and therefore the phrase "aka Kinects" is incorrect. You should instead say "e.g. Kinects."

        Since nobody is going to read this anyway I won't bother to explain why. But if you don't want to appear stupid before those who actually understand English semantics, look it up.

        • Probably meant "a la" (sorry, my keyboard doesn't have the proper accents for French) which mean like or similar to.

      • Pants are optional, but recommended for you.

        Well, I kinda have to. I keep stepping on it.

        • Pants are optional, but recommended for you.

          Well, I kinda have to. I keep stepping on it.

          Yeah. Haemorrhoids can be a bitch.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward

      You're on to something here, Schwepp .. yes requiring to have a camera staring at you to use the computer will enable us not only to look for whatever gestures you are making, we can do a lot of other things. For example we can track your eyeballs and see your pupils tighten in disgust when we place an ad on your screen say for you to eat more soy. That's one thing, there is lots more. Anyhow that's why we want to put a camera into your face and force you to have it on. The day will come when gestures are p

    • You won't even need a desk! We're one step closer to the Johnny Mnemonic user interface:

      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bL_8Ugp9zI4 [youtube.com]

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by antdude ( 79039 )

      I thought everyone used their computers nakedly, privately. :P

  • ASL translator (Score:5, Insightful)

    by n8k99 ( 888757 ) on Wednesday October 03, 2012 @08:26PM (#41544685) Homepage Journal
    This would be really interesting interface if it had a library of American Sign Language gestures and fingerspelling capabilities.

    • Right, so thumbs up is a universal sign, and "the finger" is just as universal? It's not in TFA, just in the submission from moon_unit2 who, it seems, is functionally retarded.

      Alternatively, a standardized interface will define how one interacts with the user interface.

      I would think that "ASL", being American Sign Language, would be insufficient to handle anything other than the majority of people. The people who don't sign English, or the dialect known as American, may have trouble translating before sig

      • I know what you mean, it's a shame that keyboard only work for English.

        An American company can program it for Americans, and everyone else can program it for themselves.

      • Thumbs up is not universal - Try using this in some countries and most people will be very offended

        "The finger" is largely unused outside america and not recognised in most of the world

        ASL is only used to sign English, in the USA, by the majority of US deaf people, Other languages in the USA have their own sign languages and e.g. BSL (British Sign Language) English signers would seem to be signing a completely foreign language

        ASL is largely unused outside North America and so is nowhere universal as Engli

    • Reading ASL and other countries sign language would require a little bit more work than what has been done so far. It needs facial expressions recognition as well and at least the whole upper body reading. ASL isn't limited to hands and fingers gestures. But, you are right to talk about it. The idea isn't new. The Google glasses would be a better candidate for such a system since it is portable and likely to be ubiquitious in a few years with possibily enough processing power.
    • Am I the only one who thought "age/sex/location"? Surely you'd need the "11th finger" above the desk for that to work?

      Far too much time on IRC in my youth.
    • I know nothing about this but am curious. Why would people who are deaf be unable to type as well as anyone else? If I was deaf I'd keep a tablet PC with me at all times in case I encountered someone I had difficulty communicating with so I could just type my message.

      • Re: (Score:1)

        by n8k99 ( 888757 )
        i am not suggesting/asking about this because i believe deaf or the hard of hearing have difficulty typing. it seems to me that if we have speech recognition software, why not have actual gesture/hand-shape based language recognition software. that being said, there are numerous people who are much better communicators verbally than they are as typist, hence the still popular phone call apps on phones. Perhaps, there is a similiar percentage of communicators in ASL, or any other signed language, who are muc
  • When I'm viewing porn, the cursor will just be going all over the place.

  • Leapmotion (Score:3, Informative)

    by Hunter Shoptaw ( 2655515 ) on Wednesday October 03, 2012 @08:32PM (#41544729)
    Leap has a system coming in December that does this.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward

      > Leap has a system coming in December that does this.

      May the first to the patent office win a 7 year monopoly, while the other company goes bankrupt. God Bless America.

  • Anyone else (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward

    not want a camera pointed at you just to use the computer?

  • Every Time I Use A Keypad (Score:3)

    by Scorch_Mechanic ( 1879132 ) on Wednesday October 03, 2012 @08:53PM (#41544875) Journal

    Every time I use a keypad, touchscreen, or other computerized device outside of my own desktop or laptop, I use my longest finger as my pointing finger. This is a habit I picked up my father, who is a longtime computer engineer.

    He and I both find that using the longest finger to control such devices is very cathartic.

    • Interesting, when I use my left hand I use my middle finger, and when I use my right hand, I use the index finger. Never noticed it before, and not sure where I picked these up.

      • And when am typing (coding) and occasionally using the mouse, I use my right thumb (and very rarely my left thumb). Never noticed these before.

  • interesting followup project... (Score:3)

    by Tastecicles ( 1153671 ) on Wednesday October 03, 2012 @08:55PM (#41544891)

    ...an immersion environment using a couple projectors behind you and the kinect sensors in front of you (like, in the corners of the room).

    I had a portable projector setup at one point, for the ubergeeky flightsim pilot in me, which ran off of three laptops and two projectors, onto a pair of screens set at right angles to each other: I would be sat or stood at the midpoint of the hypoteneuse to get fairly brilliant very large and almost completely immersive FS experience. Also worked on Unreal Tournament and Quake. It's not quite the same on a pair of 15" Dell panels (yeah, tried it).

    This could actually be the precursor to the Minority Report type interface, but without the glove. Yep, I'd like that.

  • The deaf (Score:3)

    by ganjadude ( 952775 ) on Wednesday October 03, 2012 @09:23PM (#41545029) Homepage
    This would be something that I would assume the deaf would have a leg up on everyone.

  • Curious (Score:3)

    by wbr1 ( 2538558 ) on Wednesday October 03, 2012 @09:56PM (#41545161)
    What happens when I wave my wang at it. Could have interesting uses in the pr0n industry.

  • Finally we can play Strategema without those annoying finger cups. Kolrami is going DOWN this time!

  • Leap Motion (Score:2, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward

    Why pay $300 for two Kinect cameras when Leap Motion already has this covered at $70

  • I picked up an optical touchscreen a while back. It was nifty and kinda gimmicky. Then my cat figure out that she could mess with the computer with her tail when I was grabbing a drink or in another room. Now the touchscreen USB cable is left unplugged. I foresee this having the same issue.
  • So can I have my keyboard-less-keyboard now please?

  • I think that in-air gesture recognition needs to be integrated with eye tracking so that the computer can map hand to screen object from the user's line of sight to the screen.
    Otherwise, there always needs to be a "pointer" of some kind, a proxy, like a virtual hand or pen on the screen.

    It does not need to be a fancy type of eye tracking that detects where your gaze is. It only needs to locate where the eyes are in space.

  • i wonder if it will be able to see the type of finger gesture, like if you flick the computer off in a joking way over some small frustration, it will be able to differentiate between that and a truly angry flick.

  • > Giving Your Computer Interface the Finger

    Several weeks down the road:

    Statistics Report
    Gesture Classification
    --------
    0.0003% Giving The Finger
    14.27% Using the mouse
    23.42% Using the keyboard
    62.28% Scratching vigorously

  • The accuracy might be good, but how accurately can you actually use this...?

    Try putting your fingertip on a small item, did you get it right first time? Now try this when you cannot feel the object, and cannot see it in relation to your hand ?

    Roll on the holographic display version of this ....

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