Minority Report UI For The Military 227
merryprankster writes "New Scientist is reporting that a 'Minority Report'
style interface is being developed by defense company Raytheon. Users don a
pair of reflective gloves and manipulate images projected on a panoramic
screen. A mounted camera keeps track of hand movements and a computer
interprets gestures. Raytheon has even
employed John Underkoffler, the researcher who
proposed the interface to the makers of the film. Now just wait till Billboards start scanning your iris."
Johnny Mnemonic (Score:4, Interesting)
Where do the $5,000 toilet seats go? (Score:2, Interesting)
The system under development at Raytheon lets users don a pair of reflective gloves and manipulate images projected on a panoramic screen. A mounted camera keeps track of hand movements and a computer interprets gestures
"Hand gestures, unlike a mouse or pointer, work really well when data is represented on wall-sized displays, for example."
And where in the field will this be used?
Am I the only one who gets scared when I imagine what a room in the pentagon might look like, with Generals wearing special glasses, and moving projected data off walls?
I'm Impressed (Score:5, Interesting)
I was actually impressed with the UI in Minority Report. I'm not saying it was necessarily perfect, but it wasn't obviously ridiculous either. There is a need to monitor information flows across many different sources, to simultaneously sense them, and to have the ability to integrate on demand. A large display with linkable data nodes is one approach that deserves further analysis.
Interesting, but misguided (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Wow - this technology is so new.... (Score:3, Interesting)
Regards,
Steve
getting there... (Score:1, Interesting)
Interface (Score:4, Interesting)
Slide/Spin/Twist
Grab/Grip/Grok/Associate
Wipe/Toss
I read a lot of Phillip K Dick and the interface portrayed in Minority Report was wonderfull.... not the goop-pool..... I'm refering to the the big screen Tom Cruise manipulated.... the goop-pool interface is the opposite extreme.
Nice story...original author highly recommended.
it makes me wonder. Which side are you on?
Hoppy Harrington says "Hi"gher
Accuracy? (Score:3, Interesting)
Also.. (Score:3, Interesting)
I was planning on writing something similar to this (actually, very similar, same libraries and everything) but now may just build on top of the HandVu libraries instead.
Re:Because it is exhausting (Score:3, Interesting)
That was exactly my first thought -- waving your arms around is bloody tiring. Heck, I like to have my mouse tracking set so I can pretty much move the cursor from one side of the screen to the other by just flexing my fingers, the heel of my palm pretty much rests in one spot (and in a different spot when using the keyboard).
Re:Because it is exhausting (Score:3, Interesting)
Holding your arms out continually puts some muscles under constant tension. No muscle in the human body was designed for that kind of punishment; Even the heart muscles, composed of the only muscle tissue that doesn't get tired, get rest periods every beat.
Quasi-holographic gestural UI (Score:1, Interesting)
Tovi Grossman, a grad student at UToronto, won best paper at UIST for developing a gestural, camera-based UI for actually building CAD models in a volumetric display from Actuality Systems. Click on the "video" for "Multi-finger gestural interaction with 3D volumetric displays."
http://www.dgp.toronto.edu/~tovi/ [toronto.edu]
Re:Because it is exhausting (Score:4, Interesting)
For another, I don't know of many people conducing 8 hour symphonys 5 nights a week.
Minority Report Interface Strange (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Wow - this technology is so new.... (Score:5, Interesting)
Try an experiment: fix your wrist, then position your fingertips in any configuration. Now, try moving any of your hand or finger bones while keeping the fingertips in the exact same position and orientation. It's very difficult, and you probably can't move those other bones too far.
Besides, it would be very rare indeed if the orientation of the second and third knuckles independent of the fingertips would be relevant to the task being performed. And even if that were true, trying that experiment shows me the interpolated position probably wouldn't vary by more than a few degrees at most.
Getting back to data gloves in general, I always thought the real data glove from many years ago was a clever piece of engineering. The one I remember seeing had an IR transceiver mounted on one side of each joint, and the IR beam was interrupted by variable width "vanes" affixed to the other side of each joint. The degree of flex was correlated to the amount of IR that was passed through the isolator. No moving or rotating parts to wear out (except for the glove,) and no friction for the user.
This is what I do at my work, but ours is better (Score:4, Interesting)
At Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, we are implementing something we call the HI-Space table, which uses a camera to track hand motions as well. Ours doesn't need special gloves, though. You can walk up to the table and move your hands around and it watches any number of hands, doing any number of poses. It detects objects that are placed in the space and recognizes them if they are in the database. We have voice recognition, too, so it can respond to spoken commands.
One of the best things about our system is that it is completely untethered and intuitive. There is no training period, and no device to put on. You are interacting with the digital world by manipulating in the physical world.
I write applications for the table. There are a lot of issues that come up that you wouldn't normally think about. For example, with many hands in the space, it's easy to have people doing conflicting things. Actions are not so clearly defined, either. For example, when selecting a button, do you point to it? For how long? What if your finger moves a little?
We are currently conducting user studies to see in what ways the HI-Space table is better than the desktop and cave environments, and we're looking for other applications and organizations interested in using this technology.
http://www.hitl.washington.edu/projects/hispace// [washington.edu]
http://www.pnl.gov/infoviz/hces// [pnl.gov]
contact me at bob [dot] baddeley [at] pnl [dot] gov