The Decliner

This TED video has been blowing my mind for a few days. There’s currently a lot of focus on touch-screen technology as the next standard in interaction with gadgets — everything from Microsoft’s Surface to personal electronic like the iPhone.

The SixthSense device developed by the MIT Fluid Interfaces Lab and Pranav Mistry turns the touchscreen on its head: It is a wearable projector with an attached camera/sensor that interprets natural hand gestures as commands. In other words, with the wave of a hand you can capture images, or perform any number of increasingly complex processes.

The uses for the SixthSense device are demonstrated in the video below, all of which take advantage of the device’s access to online information for tasks like scanning products at the grocery store based on personal preferences — like, red flashing lights when you pick up a frozen Banquet dinner with enough sodium and nitrates to kill a Kodiak bear. Extended abilities include projecting multimedia (like videos) on a normal newspaper, since the device not only reacts to gestures, but can also scan and adapt to whatever the user might have in front of him/her at the time.

Best of all, of course, is the fact that SixthSense can work with *any* surface, since it travels with the user. The implications are huge, as you can tell from the euphoric applause from the TED audience members (any Microsoft employees in attendance might have been in the fetal position, not sure). The only drawback is the bulkiness of the device itself, though the fact that the components themselves are already so affordable would likely make reduction in size and into an attractive retail product much easier.

In many environments the latter would already be largely irrelevant. As I watched the video of the device in action, I could already picture it in use in some far-flung military base, or in use by an Amazon.com employee doing inventory in some cavernous warehouse.

Sometimes the best ideas are just a re-arrangement of existing technology, what the SixthSense team seems to have nailed down is the fact that focusing on people’s existing behavior and molding a design to fit their needs is the key, rather than expecting them to adapt to an elaborate and counter-intuitive device.

Tags: SixthSense

This entry was posted on Sunday, March 15th, 2009 at 10:49 pm and is filed under technology. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.