Posted 02/04/09 at 08:50:59 PM by Norman Chan

Easily the coolest part of today’s TED event was Dr. Pattie Maes’s “Reframe” presentation on new technology interfaces. Maes, a researcher at MIT’s Media Lab, energized the crowd with a demonstration of a $350 piece of technology that her team dubs “the sixth sense.” Maes’s Fluid Interfaces research group collaborates on projects and inventions that augment the interaction between human and machine, including both visual and haptic interfaces that are far more immersive than our traditional keyboard and monitor.

Maes started by discussing the five natural senses that humans have developed over the past million years of evolution. These senses help us make important decisions in everyday life, including how we interact with other individuals and our physical environment. But arguably, the most useful stimulus we come across is information that we don’t have easy access to via these senses, such as large amounts of aggregated data and factual knowledge. Increasingly, all of this knowledge is being stored and made available online.

The question, then is whether we could develop (either naturally or artificially) a sixth sense to detect this meta-information that may exist and is relevant to our decision-making.

Read on to see what Dr. Maes and her team developed!

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Posted 11/10/08 at 05:04:21 PM by Andy Salisbury

Some might argue that the mouse is currently a great tool for playing games of just about any genre, but Mgestyk Technologies politely disagrees. With the first (planned) public sale of a gesture control system, they seek to bring the Minority Report-like action straight to you.

Using only what’s been described as an “affordable 3D camera” and some proprietary software that will capture small hand gestures, they plan on challenging everyone’s favorite – the mouse. Understandably, some gamers might be reluctant to give up their Logitech or Razer in favor of holding their hands in front of a camera, there are undoubtedly some pretty notable foundations here.

In a video provided by Mgestyk there’s some pretty interesting footage demonstrating the technology that they've come up with. While yes, the reaction time between gesture and response may be a big higher than desired, there are plenty of people that have expressed interest. Mgestyk claims that they’ve got a waiting list for people looking to get their hands on the tech, and they aren’t willing to commit a release date or a price.

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Posted 06/25/08 at 07:14:46 PM by Pulkit Chandna

Some things are so obvious that one completely ignores them and the computer mouse is one of them. However, Gartner analyst Steve Prentice still managed to turn his attention to the generic device – maybe for the lack of a better subject of attention - and came up with an ominously titled paper “Gestural Computing: The End of the Mouse”. He has sounded the death knell for the mouse. But you will need to read further to know why the computer mouse is steadily scrolling towards its grave.

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