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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

#41

Post by weego »

rglover wrote: post #33

If you're an interface designer (I am), you should pre-order this thing. This will be a standard form of interaction in a couple of years and you should jump on it early and start figuring out the kinks. Too cool.

It really won't. Have you any idea how tiring waving your arms around like that would be all day?

There are so many use cases where it doesn't even work that would require a complete rethink of how anything is presented on in internet. For example how about the HN comments where it's pasted as code and it scrolls horizontally. Target that and scroll it with that system. As soon as you have a single use case where a mouse and keyboard is more effective you blow your value.

Re: Leap: A new gesture based interface for devices

#42

Post by jasonwatkinspdx »

pbreit wrote: post #27

This is very cool technology. The company was formerly "Ocuspec". One break-through is using very inexpensive hardware (<$5 at RadioShack) to get that sub-mm resolution. At the other end of the spectrum, they can cover a football field (and more in the future). What they are showing now is just the beginning. Kudos to rolling out with an SDK. I can inly imagine what sorts of applications developers will dream up.

What's the hardware? Two infrared cameras and a laser dot pattern of some sort?

Re: Leap: A new gesture based interface for devices

#43

Post by egypturnash »

powatom wrote: post #38

It'll be interesting to see how this pans out - but I can't see it being widely adopted in the home any time soon. People who want gesture based stuff will use Kinect. However, I can see this being huge in the commercial market. I can easily imagine using something like this in a shop, or for presentations at work.

Googling for "kinect price" gives me numbers of about $150; this is priced at $70. Even if we assume this is a discounted price to lure in pre-orders, that still leaves room for it to cost less.

I would not think of getting a Kinect but my thought upon seeing the video was "I want to get one of these and use it to control the RasPi I'm sticking in some fake taxidermy along with a pico projector for a micro media PC."

Re: Leap: A new gesture based interface for devices

#44

Post by rglover »

weego wrote: post #41
rglover wrote: post #33

If you're an interface designer (I am), you should pre-order this thing. This will be a standard form of interaction in a couple of years and you should jump on it early and start figuring out the kinks. Too cool.

It really won't. Have you any idea how tiring waving your arms around like that would be all day? There are so many use cases where it doesn't even work that would require a complete rethink of how anything is presented on in internet. For example how about the HN comments where it's pasted as code and it scrolls horizontally. Target that and scroll it with that system. As soon as you have a single use case where a m…

Hm, maybe. But that was my point with saying interface designers should hop on this: they design the interaction to be simple enough that it doesn't wear you out (at least, that's how I'd look at one facet of designing for this).

Moreover, it's not enough to just copy our current understanding of UI over to a form of input like this. Of course that's the natural inclination, but in reality, interfaces will change and adapt to things like this (meaning scrolling may not exist and a whole new form of pagination may be invented). The "how" is up to the designers.

More than anything, you really articulated my point by saying that "it really won't." You're right: as things stand in terms of interaction, this would become tiring. You just have to think of a way to make it not.

Re: Leap: A new gesture based interface for devices

#45

Post by jasonwatkinspdx »

nrp wrote: post #22
mrsebastian wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Any idea what the tech behind it is? They're very vague on the website, and my patent searches are turning up empty. I guess some kind of infrared thing?

I suspect infrared time-of-flight. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time-of-flight_camera You can get pretty impressive accuracy and precision at short distances, and the plane of depth points matches what their demo video shows: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_d6KuiuteIA&feature=playe...

I've read some other comments claiming that they can cover football stadium sized venues. If that's true, I think that suggests laser illumination.

Re: Leap: A new gesture based interface for devices

#46

Post by netfire »

While waving your hand in front of a monitor looks pretty cool, its definitely not going to work well for most work or extended use. Also, I think the reason touch-based devices have caught on so well is that we like the tactile feedback of dragging our finger across a defined plane.

I'd be interested to see what you could do if you projected an image onto a work surface to make that more interactive. Seems like it would be easier to draw or manipulate 2D things on a plane rather than trying to wave your hand in 3D space. (Image Manipulation, Graphic Editing, Maps, etc)

Re: Leap: A new gesture based interface for devices

#47

Post by acgourley »

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

* Periodic writing with pencil tool

bad

* Shooters - can't turn player around, gameplay too long.

* Longterm writing or drawing - too tiring

Re: Leap: A new gesture based interface for devices

#48

Post by peterhajas »

simonbarker87 wrote: post #10
mrsebastian wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Any idea what the tech behind it is? They're very vague on the website, and my patent searches are turning up empty. I guess some kind of infrared thing?

Yeah, my guess is some kind of LIDAR type device and perhaps a mix of a couple of other things. A researcher friend of mine was musing over possible uses of LIDAR a couple of years ago and this was one of his end uses if my memory is correct. I could of course be wrong, so if someone knows different

I thought LIDAR was prohibitively expensive technology for use in consumer applications, but I could be wrong. I remember reading about it when Radiohead did their "House of Cards" music video with LIDAR tech.

Re: Leap: A new gesture based interface for devices

#49

Post by JackC »

danblick wrote: post #29

Not to be cynical, but this reminds me a little of Alan Kay's comment: """ By the way, Sketchpad was the first system where it was discovered that the light pen was a very bad input device. The blood runs out of your hand in about 20 seconds, and leaves it numb. And in spite of that it’s been re-invented at least 90 times in the last 25 years. """ from http://archive.org/details/AlanKeyD1987 around 7:10

I think there will be some things it's great at and some it's terrible at. Here's one for free: how about using this to create the Rosetta Stone of sign language? Or a portable sign-to-speech translator? (These are hard problems for other reasons, but this thing brings you a lot closer.)

Think of it like this: Alan Kay isn't wrong, but you could say the same thing about any input. The mouse is a very bad input device. It takes forever to use it for on-screen typing. The keyboard is a very bad input device. It can't tell how hard you're hitting each key when you do musical typing in GarageBand. The microphone is a very bad input device. Voice control is way slower than just clicking the menu item you want ...

If this thing is real, then within a couple of years there will be a dozen reasons to refuse to buy a computer without one.

Re: Leap: A new gesture based interface for devices

#50

Post by Cushman »

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…

One of the things I've dreamed of using gestures for is controlling behavior (scrolling, navigation, etc.) in a second monitor without changing focus. I hope somebody implements that.
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