Gesture Control

Saw the review on the Toshiba Qosmio G50 laptop today on Digital Life. The thing that caught my attention is that it claims to be the first laptop that supports gesture control, using the built-in webcam. (Now this is a topic for pervasive computing).


Actually, thinking of it, gesture control is not a new concept. The Nintendo Wii already uses gesture control as its main feature, although the medium is not from moving visual images. For example, an IPAQ coupled with an accelerometer makes use of the same concept (just that Wii got it right and commercialized it).

Seems like GestureTek is the pioneer of gesture control software (according to Business History Today).

Sony Ericsson's upcoming (?) Z555 touts gesture control - on an interesting, but unrelated note, it is a clamshell, a breakaway from Sony Ericsson's affection for candy bars - as seen on Network World which thinks that gesture control may be the "new wave in consumer electronics". Given time, I believe that gesture control will be the new wave in personal and ubiqutous computing as well. (Not needing even a touch screen nor a stylus)

This should be what computing is all about. Humans should NOT be adapting themselves to the machine interfaces, as is the case with ALL technology nowadays, instead, machines should adapt to humans, and reliably guess what they want. ("You want me to click OK? NO! YOU click OK!" - Prof Larry Rudolph)