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Leap Motion: Three Dimensional Gesture Control

technologyreview.com

11–13 of 13 posts

Re: Leap Motion: Three Dimensional Gesture Control

#11
I agree with others who are saying that waving your arm can quickly become tiring, but maybe you could point this device on a table so you could rest your hand on the table (or surface of the laptop) like using a mouse and only your index finger would be in the air. I think that way it would be less tiring.

Re: Leap Motion: Three Dimensional Gesture Control

#12
So, despite having spend some time surfing the web, mostly right after the device was announced, I still don't know how the Leap Motion works. I realize, that this is proprietary technology so it might be simply unknown. Still, from a magazine like TR I would expect to hear at least an educated guesses.

They link to a different article [1] which apparently got a demo from one of the founders. They claim, that the Leap uses VGA camera sensors but then they talk about a force field - whatever that is supposed to mean in this context. [...] Leap's device tracks all movement inside its force field [...]

Earlier, I heard some crude speculations about electro magnetic sensing and a mathematical breakthrough, that lead to the foundation of the company. But I have no idea what to think of them. A quick search on google scholar about the the two founders didn't reveal anything so far, either.

There is a Quora thread [2] on the topic, where someone, without any further comment linked to a 2012 Microsoft Research paper [3] with the title SoundWave: Using the Doppler Effect to Sense Gestures.

My assumption would have been, that they do indeed use optical cameras only. By using a bunch of them, combined with different angles and positions as well as a very limited workspace, they are able to increase the accuracy when compared to the Kinect. Do we have any hint on whether or not they project an infrared grid like the Kinect does?

[1] http://www.theverge.com/2012/6/26/3118592/leap-motion-gestur... [2] http://www.quora.com/Leap-Motion/Does-the-Leap-product-work-... [3] http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/um/redmond/groups/cue/pu...

Re: Leap Motion: Three Dimensional Gesture Control

#13
post #9

Looks cool; has high resolution but what about accuracy? I didn't actually see him touch anything in particular, just wave around and create lots of swoops. Can you select an individual item from one of those swarms? Also, exhausting. Waving your arms all day, just to scroll. Still its coarse motor control instead of fine motor, which is less tedious.

Also, exhausting. Waving your arms all day, just to scroll. Still its coarse motor control instead of fine motor, which is less tedious. Yeah, I'd be shocked if this replaces the scroll wheel. I can see a few ways it might complement existing input devices, though. One is for maybe a dozen intuitive, system-wide shortcuts. Like "if I stick out two fingers and twitch to the right within six inches of the screen, and I…

I think that 3D modeling is where this will shine. Imagine something like SketchUp with gestures. Manipulating 3D objects with a mouse is very tedious.
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