Last year, we saw the first “Gestural Interfaces” from pioneering companies like PrimeSense and Toshiba (most likely a licensee of PrimeSense).
In the intervening year, we saw Microsoft announce and demo to universal acclaim “Project Natal”, based on PrimeSense’s chipset. And gestural interface to games (no controller) was the talk of the E3 Games Conference. Well, gestural interfaces/natural interaction are even more widespread this year. If the Wii has revolutionized and democratized games by providing two points of information (from the IR controllers), gestural interfaces potentially bring millions of points of information into the equation without asking people to have a remote control.
Q: Why do they call it a “remote control?”
A: Because it’s always remote when you want it.
– Inon Beracha, CEO of PrimeSense
Many vendors were showing variants of this concept, and it will continue to be an important theme in consumer electronics. Inon and PrimeSense continued to communicate a clear vision for natural interaction: “Instead of you leaning forward for the machine, the machine will lean forward to you.”
Watch this trend… It’s going to be big.