2 Responses

1. 

   Siderite

   March 16th, 2009 at 10:01 am

   I saw the presentation a few days ago and I have to say I was impressed, but it all felt so demo like. You know, when you tweak a project in order to look good for the customer, even if, in fact, it doesn’t really work so well? How much power do you need for a portable projector? And if not much, how come we don’t already use white walls instead of monitors?

   As for the idea to capture the gestures with a camera and use intelligent algorithms rather than hardware to detect meaning, that’s exploding all around. Take for example that guy who transformed the wii remote into a 3D motion headgear and said that the technology is so basic that it can be done with 5$ or the MIT Media Lab guys who used 8 microphones embedded in a ping-pong table to detect where the ball fell and a projector to draw all kind of visual stuff on the table while playing.

   It seems almost anything can be done with enough processing power and a few sensors. The bottleneck in portability, I believe, is not in the processing power (since Moore’s law is alive and kicking), but in the battery technology, which seems to advance the slowest.

2. 

   Tudor

   March 16th, 2009 at 10:34 am

   Yes, I totally agree with you on the cheap sensors and sophisticated algorithms, but keep in mind that can change in the years to come, because, while cheap sensors become more cheaper, the brain power required for developing those algorithms becomes more and more expensive. So let’s not exclude the possibility that some CEO will try to use “meaning detecting hardware” and develop micro-controllers for this specific purpose…

   Anyway, I can’t wait to buy one of those gizmos…