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Leap: A new gesture based interface for devices

leapmotion.com

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Re: Leap: A new gesture based interface for devices

#131

Post by chadmalik »

acgourley wrote: post #47

Let's have a constructive comment thread. Instead conveying love or hate for it, how about listing the cases it's good and bad for. good * Fruit Ninja - made for single finger input, short gameplay * Pinching and zooming maps - good because it's usually a short activity * CAD camera interactions - good for periodic strange rotation needs or showing a client that doesn't understand the normal movement hotkeys * Period…

I think some incredibly cool music apps could be created with this. Excited to get one when it's released.

Re: Leap: A new gesture based interface for devices

#132

Post by amatsukawa »

They should mount this inside a keyboard, I don't want an extra dongle randomly lying on my table.

On a completely different note, though, I wonder what the range on these things is. Could have excellent applications to robotics, I hope they don't completely close the vision outputs behind their own gesture APIs or something...

Re: Leap: A new gesture based interface for devices

#133

Post by jarin »

ChrisFornof wrote: post #73

Dev Kits (free) Ship international within 1-3 months. Pre-orders ($70) only ship domestic (for now) around winter. 20,000 dev kits are being made. We want to ensure this tech becomes ubiquitous. We're getting slammed with launch response. But if you guys have questions, we'll try to answer them here shortly. -Chris Community Builder

Does it have enough active area to cover two monitors side by side?

Re: Leap: A new gesture based interface for devices

#134

Post by ChuckMcM »

I'd love something that was a combination of the two, a touch surface and something like this looking 'down' toward that surface at what my hands were doing. I could make typing like motions on the touch surface for typing. But more importantly mostly my hands would be resting on something rather than hanging out in front of me.

Re: Leap: A new gesture based interface for devices

#135

Post by natemartin »

ChrisFornof wrote: post #101
natemartin wrote: post #70

Did anyone get an email confirmation after applying for the dev kit? After I hit the button, it reloaded to the home page, and I haven't seen any emails.

Website is a little wonky at the moment. Bear with us guys. We'll get you your kits soon enough.

Just wondering if I should fill it out a second time, since I never saw a confirmation screen. I understand it will take some time to ship, just want to know the application actually made it into the database! :)

Re: Leap: A new gesture based interface for devices

#136

Post by corysama »

pfraze wrote: post #117
kreek wrote: post #115

Interfaces like this look cool in movies but your hands aren't 'designed' to be above your heart for an extended period of time. Now if you had something like a drafting table with a touch screen I'd be first in line.

Agreed, but I don't want a replacement interface; I want a companion to my keyboard. Type type type. Throw that away. Type type. Make that bigger. Type type type type. Run that. I can't wait.

Mount it above your monitor pointing down instead of setting it below pointing up. Basically, point it at your keyboard. Type, type, type, lift your wrist a couple inches, pinch, zoom, drag.

Re: Leap: A new gesture based interface for devices

#137

Post by officialchicken »

huhtenberg wrote: post #64
acgourley wrote: post #47

Let's have a constructive comment thread. Instead conveying love or hate for it, how about listing the cases it's good and bad for. good * Fruit Ninja - made for single finger input, short gameplay * Pinching and zooming maps - good because it's usually a short activity * CAD camera interactions - good for periodic strange rotation needs or showing a client that doesn't understand the normal movement hotkeys * Period…

> Periodic writing with pencil tool Very very inconvenient. Writing on air is completely different and considerably more tricky that writing on paper. Physically more demanding too. It's one of those things that sound nice in theory, but not really practical.

Actually this has problem has been solved and is used daily by millions of deaf people for decades... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Sign_Language

Re: Leap: A new gesture based interface for devices

#138

Post by hollerith »

abecedarius wrote: post #112
iandanforth wrote: post #92

I'm sad the word 'robot' hasn't appeared in this thread yet. Let's correct that. Visual slam is great for medium distances, but pointclouds aren't really that dense and are slow to update. Also the lidar to make the point clouds is stupid expensive. Add one of these guys onto your robot and you've got a really cool set of 'wiskers.' Short range, highly sensitive, super fast update. I'd love to put several of these on…

Great point. As far as openness, I'm concerned by this talk of an app store.

Even putting aside concerns about openness, the mere fact that they are talking this early about an app store is evidence that they're not focused on delivering value. Apple did not start talking about an app store for iDevices until they had millions of satisfied customers. I mean, why not use the Mac App Store? Maybe they have a good answer to that question, but if so, they should tell us what it is.

Re: Leap: A new gesture based interface for devices

#139

Post by neilk »

officialchicken wrote: post #137
huhtenberg wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Periodic writing with pencil tool Very very inconvenient. Writing on air is completely different and considerably more tricky that writing on paper. Physically more demanding too. It's one of those things that sound nice in theory, but not really practical.

Actually this has problem has been solved and is used daily by millions of deaf people for decades... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Sign_Language

Yup. ASL uses a pretty large amount of space and it's not clear to me that this thing can resolve every gesture. For instance, what happens when one hand occludes another from the Leap's perspective? Can it know that my thumb is up if the rest of my hand is hiding it?

But we can imagine a kind of ASL shorthand, like the original Palm Pilot's 'Graffiti'. Or, maybe if you buy two or three, you can set them up to combine perspectives, giving them more insight into the full 3d space.

That could be useful to deaf people and maybe could also serve as a new form of shorthand for people who are writing long texts on devices without keyboards.

Re: Leap: A new gesture based interface for devices

#140

Post by Schwolop »

bgalbraith wrote: post #127
iandanforth wrote: post #92

I'm sad the word 'robot' hasn't appeared in this thread yet. Let's correct that. Visual slam is great for medium distances, but pointclouds aren't really that dense and are slow to update. Also the lidar to make the point clouds is stupid expensive. Add one of these guys onto your robot and you've got a really cool set of 'wiskers.' Short range, highly sensitive, super fast update. I'd love to put several of these on…

I work on adaptive mobile robots as part of my research, and I'd be very interested to see how the LEAP compares to the Kinect in this area. I submitted a developer kit request, so maybe I'll get to find out. Also, from the Ars Technica post on LEAP: "The company says the breakthrough in resolution comes not from the hardware, which consists of relatively standard parts, but from what CTO David Holz calls 'a number o…

Likewise, I submitted a dev request. I'm already working with Kinect/Primesense tech to get point clouds and do gesture recognition work, but this could be a cheaper and potentially better option. At this point however, who knows? There's just not enough info on the capabilities, features, and API.
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