g-speak overview 1828121108 from john underkoffler on Vimeo.
After having seen the above video you will undoubtedly make direct comparisons to what was seen in Minority Report, and that’s no coincidence. John Underkoffler, one of Oblong’s co-founders, was the science advisor on the film and built much of what we saw in the movie from what he was working on at MIT.
The gesture-based g-speak “spatial operating interface” (SOE) software platform has been in development at MIT’s Media Laboratory since the early 1990s and its intended use isn’t as nerdy as we’d expect. It’s meant to facilitate answers to real-world issues such as:
analysis of large data sets
operation of three-dimensional interfaces
construction of efficient multi-user collaborative applications
integration of large screens and multiple computers into room- and building-scale work environments
development of large-scale applications that run interactively across enterprise networks
The platform, which is compatible with Linux and Mac, is currently in use at Fortune 50 companies, government agencies, and universities in a variety of areas, such as:
Financial services
Telepresence
Network operations centers
Logistics and supply chain management
Military and intelligence
Automotive
Natural resource exploration
Data mining and analytics
Medical imaging
High-touch retail
Trade shows and theatrical presentations
Consumer electronics interfaces
G-speak is available in room-sized and single-user settings. I wonder how I could expense this.
luminous room demos from john underkoffler on Vimeo.
By far one of the coolest things I have seen in a while, I hope it makes its way to CES this year. But what practice use does it have and how much will it cost?
about $4.50 and the practice use is of A grade standard
This is interesting. Something that can have far reaching applications and change the way we interact with information. It is good to finally see some advanced in hardware. I was starting to think we had entered the computing dark ages.
Wow, another example of a totally useless interface paradigm. OK, maybe not totally useless, but I’m having a tough time thinking of how this will improve anything.
They really need to come up with better examples that showcase what it can do (maybe this is really all there is).
Their example for showing how you can access huge amounts of data is a bunch of cubes with Chinese letters on them. That’s lame.
Another example showed a globe with a bunch of arcs connecting different points around the world. Woah. Very useful, that is. Again, their examples need help.
Let’s hope they come out with some more solid concepts using this technology. Their might be some hope or use for it, but it really does seem like a stillborn path.
Yeah… that’s what I said about the mouse.
Big process changes are always hard to imagine in practice. Don’t write this off yet - or your lack of vision will come back to haunt you later. (Mark my words!)
Here’s a really neat look at this type of technology used in the everyday consumer world:
http://vimeo.com/1416530?pg=embed&sec=1416530
I like apples. :)
Minority report also showed beautiful ‘transparent’ displays - these were based on OLEDs -
http://www.oled-info.com/oled-tv
And soon we’ll get transparent OLEDs, too. So together with the G-speak, we’ll get that beautiful user interface…
Ron
Really great to see it in action. The video editing about 2/3rd of the way through with the truck and a pedestrian was awesome. They should rename this product “Conductor”, for the way the hand gestures mimic a musical conductor on stage.
That is pretty awesome. Although didn’t Nintendo already have some of this technology back in the 80s with the Power Glove? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WYBzKFm-rd0
It was awesome for those Mike Tyson Punch Out fans.
I saw very little in that video that couldn’t be done with a mouse or with a couple of pointing devices. I still think this is a solution in search of a problem. The protagonists claim that these interfaces a good for information visualization, but the interactions the interfaces define are based on gross motor skills rather than fine motor skills. My sense is that the more data you have to interact with, the finer control you need.
That is some awesome technology.
I can’t believe how short-sighted some of the above comments are. Gesture-based interfaces have a large number of uses in both consumer and commercial applications. The large benefit is combining the intuitive nature of gesturing with the horsepower of computing. At the very least, this technology elevates pointing devices into the 3-dimensional world — something that is somewhat cumbersome and difficult with current 2D devices.
I think the v-glove is second rate technology when compared to the lightglove. Same controls just no glove.
Wow! Simply amazing!
The Precrime unit here in Armpit, AZ have been waiting for something like this to replace our TTY terminals.
I’ll bet the Defense Department could find a use or two for it. Take another look with that in mind.
This has tremendous potential.
Think of how the iPhone and other gesture based devices are transforming the entire mobile computing market. The internet on a mobile phone was almost unusable before and now it’s a whole different experience. It’s usable, intuitive and even fun. My wife who typically is somewhat technology adverse is even drawn into using it. Intuitive technologies always radically change usability. When something is intuitive, the barriers to entry greatly reduced and a product that had marginal acceptance and use flourishes. Also, thing of the popularity of the Wii despite it being substantially inferior hardware-wise to the XBox 360 and Sony Playstation 3.
I think a UI like this will have important but limited utility for, as they say, visualizing and interacting with large datasets that benefit from 3D rendering. There’s still a level of indirection here — people are waving their hands around a room, often selecting things with a cursor. The big “ah-ha!” of the iPhone was there seemed to be no more indirection or intermediary — instead of moving a mouse around to push things on the screen, you just push the things themselves. Direct manipulation. So I think the future of touch-based, gestural interfaces is probably much brighter for the population at large. Waving your arms in the air is probably better suited for niche applications and entertainment activities.
this is really amazing!