I can't remember which episode, but a few years ago I mentioned on my podcast that I didn't understand why companies were spending so much time with touch screens and multi-touch input devices when we all have a perfectly good input device staring at us, unused, everyday - our webcams. Minority Report was not only a great movie, but a great user experience idea.
Johnny Chung Lee (I thought he and I had a bromance going, but it's just a fauxmance. It's one way, sniff, he doesn't know I'm alive! ;) did some amazing work in this space using the Wii remote a while back.
Ever since I saw Minority Report, perhaps even before since it's such an obvious idea, I've been searching and trying to figure out when and how this is going to happen. From my point of view, there's just no reason I shouldn't be able to make a small gesture and push a window over to another monitor. Swipe down in the air, minimize. It if was reliable, it'd be a perfect and elegant addition to the mouse and keyboard.
Johnny now works for Microsoft, and recently we learned that he's been working with the team that is doing Project Natal. If you've been under a virtual rock, here's a video what Natal does. Basically it tracks your body and you become the game controller. If it works, it'll be epic. If it fails, it'll be sad. The real question is WHEN. My bet is Christmas, only because it's obvious.
From Johnny's Blog:
The 3D sensor itself is a pretty incredible piece of equipment providing detailed 3D information about the environment similar to very expensive laser range finding systems but at a tiny fraction of the cost. Depth cameras provide you with a point cloud of the surface of objects that is fairly insensitive to various lighting conditions allowing you to do things that are simply impossible with a normal camera. But once you have the 3D information, you then have to interpret that cloud of points as "people". This is where the researcher jaws stay dropped. The human tracking algorithms that the teams have developed are well ahead of the state of the art in computer vision in this domain. The sophistication and performance of the algorithms rival or exceed anything that I've seen in academic research, never mind a consumer product. At times, working on this project has felt like a miniature “Manhattan project” with developers and researchers from around the world coming together to make this happen.
Before the world (or I) had ever heard of Project Natal, I pounced on interviewed Johnny at Mix 09 in Las Vegas. Recently Raleigh Buckner mentioned on Twitter that there was a lot "said without actually saying" in that interview, and darn it, he's right. I asked the right questions, and Johnny answered, but we (the collective) didn't see!
Wow. I just bumped into Johnny Lee in the halls here at Mix09. I'm a huge fanboi with a man-crush on this dude. You've seen Johnny before on Channel 9 talking to Robert Hess. Johnny's a legend (in my mind) in the computer vision space, and he put up with me gushing at him here at Mix09. We chatted in the hall about computer vision, what he's working on, how he got the gig at Microsoft and where he sees the future of human-computer-interaction.
Crazy stuff. I'm very excited to see how far they can take this.
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