Just smile and wave
3Gear Systems is a start-up pursuing the vision that gesture control should be implemented without having to touch any electronics in the first place. They are pursuing that vision through vision-enabled gesture recognition powered by a tiny camera-controlled device.
Leap Motion is another company into this same space, but they offer a gesture-recognition solution in a box. Their device can be used with devices like laptops and even Oculus Rift. It works by using a mix of two cameras and three infrared light emitting diodes (LEDs). The cameras track light from the LEDs at a wavelength of 850 nanometers. This wavelength is outside the visible spectrum, so users cannot see it at all. Once this piece of hardware gets data, it passes it to Leap Motion tracking software that does all data crunching.
ArcSoft’s technology enables gesture recognition on devices having stereoscopic or even single-lens devices. This enables using natural hand gestures as well as face, eye and finger motions to interact with devices. ArcSoft claims that their capabilities for hand gestures are highly accurate, detecting clear gestures at five metres even under low-light or back-lighting conditions.
Another example is Seoul based VTOUCH, which lets users control devices by tracking their eyes and fingers using a 3D camera.
AMD, too, is interested in this area, probably to strengthen the market for their accelerated processing units. AMD Gesture Control software is freely available, which allows users to utilise cameras such as their devices’ built-in cameras as gesture-recognition tools. The company claims it delivers good accuracy in low-light conditions.
TedCas is a firm that specialises in building touch-free natural UI based medical environments. They focus on the use of optoelectronic devices to deliver intuitive interactions as a way to prevent contact infections. One of their products is called TedCube, which is a small device that can connect to any gesture-control sensor to translate gestures into generic keyboard and mouse commands. TedCube can be connected to any system or equipment to control it.
