MIT researchers develop the most fabulous gesture control technique yet

By Joseph L. Flatley posted May 23rd 2010 10:41PM

When looking for a cheap, reliable way to track gestures, Robert Wang and Jovan Popovic of MIT's Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory came upon this notion: why not paint the operator's hands (or better yet, his Lycra gloves) in a manner that will allow the computer to differentiate between different parts of the hand, and differentiate between the hand and the background? Starting with something that Howie Mandel might have worn in the 80s, the researchers are able to use a simple webcam to track the hands' locations and gestures -- with relatively little lag. The glove itself is split into twenty patches made up of ten different colors, and while there's no telling when this technology will be available for consumers, something tells us that when it does become available it'll be very hard not to notice. Video after the break.

FABULOUS....

Pure genius from MIT.

Back when I was in university, one of my professors described a similar approach he used for a vision system he built to classify objects in the 1980s; and it was primarily used as a way to talk about ways to work towards solving problems that were far from being solved. Essentially, the concept is to take a problem that is too complicated to be solved and removing all complexity until you could solve a much simpler problem, and then slowly reintroduce complexity and solve that problem; and in his particular case it involved painting objects with bright neon spray paint and placing them in an room that had nothing but the objects in it.

In this case in particular, I would doubt that anyone would ever make a product that required people to wear such silly gloves; but if they can slowly reduce the number of colours that are required, and determine what the core problem is with analyzing the position of the hands, they will be far more likely to actually produce a gesture system that works 5 or 10 years from now.

as expected, MIT makes something that makes anything from the game companies pathetic.

that from a web cam. NATAL just got owned by a 1.3 megapixel webcam, LMFAO

Pretty awesome stuff.
though i wonder if anyone is going to complain about the glowing b- i mean the raindbow colors without knowing their purpose.

i think this is a better aproach (i hope i don't get banned) than Wii Mote , Move and Natal.

each part of the glove has a color and each color can be recognized by the camera (which is why i made that glowing ball comment) , it works simillar to PS Move , but it is also more interactive and will cause no lag since there isn't no sensors from controller point , and also it will focus on your hands only so there is no weird gestures.

i approve to this idea

Now for full body motion detection, we will just need a full body rainbow suit.. ~_n

Why not make the gloves monochrome in the visible spectrum, but all different 'colours' in the IR or UV or some other spectrum that the camera can pick up? Then it would be more acceptable as a product.

That was awesome.

Gaming Companies should look at providing Stipends to a few Graduate students at MIT.

Yeah, it works but it looks like something from the 70's.