Is it time to bin the TV remote? After making a big splash in video games, gesture recognition is coming to the small screen. A Brussels-based joint venture called will demonstrate gesture-based control of television at the , opening tomorrow in Las Vegas, Nevada.
Gesture recognition has looked promising since the 1990s, but applications were initially limited by the need for expensive sensors and powerful processors. Now the technology has matured, and cheapened. Last year Microsoft鈥檚 Kinect brought gesture recognition to the Xbox 360 game console for a mere $150, allowing players to animate onscreen avatars.
Now Softkinetic-Optrima has assembled its own gesture-recognition system to control a television or set-top box. Using a set of simple motions, viewers 鈥渃an do complete navigation, go to menus, click on things, increase volume, or close a movie鈥�, says Softkinetic-Optrima CEO Michel Tombroff.
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The system displays onscreen menus that respond to gestures; it even creates an 鈥渁ir keyboard so you can type text with your hands鈥�, he told 快猫短视频. Users should need only a few minutes to calibrate the system and learn how to use it, he adds.
Radar remote
Like the Kinect, the TV system uses light from a low-power infrared laser to gauge distance, which is crucial in gesture recognition. Beyond that, the two use quite different techniques. Kinect鈥檚 鈥渓ight coding鈥� approach, developed by of Tel Aviv, Israel, constantly projects a proprietary pattern into the room, and records it using an image sensor to determine distance and the profiles of face and hands.
The Optrima camera instead illuminates points in the scene with a series of laser pulses, and measures return time to determine distance, like radar. It includes a colour camera with separate imaging chip, so it can also be used for teleconferencing.
The Kinect system runs its software on the Xbox鈥檚 powerful chip, but TVs and set-top boxes lack advanced processors, so Softkinetic-Optrima chose an approach that needs less computing power. Nevertheless, the system still allows the user to change channels 鈥� with sweeping gestures from left to right or vice versa 鈥� 鈥渇aster than with a remote control,鈥� says Tombroff.
It remains to be seen whether users will inadvertently change the channel while talking energetically with friends 鈥� the high-tech equivalent of accidentally sitting on the remote.
