The Leap: Gesture control like Kinect, but cheaper and much higher resolution

Pedro · May 21, 2012

It seems Minority Report-style computer interfaces might arrive a whole lot sooner than we expected: A new USB device, called The Leap, creates an 8-cubic-feet bubble of “interaction space,” which detects your hand gestures down to an accuracy of 0.01 millimeters — about 200 times more accurate than “existing touch-free products and technologies,” such as your smartphone’s touchscreen… or Microsoft Kinect.
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Technical details aside, The Leap is available to pre-order now for $70, and is expected to ship early next year. For now, Leap Motion is actually giving away free units and an SDK to developers — though I suspect there’s a limit on how many Leaps are up for grabs. Once the device gets into the hands of developers, we should have a much better idea of how the technology works.
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http://www.extremetech.com/computin...kinect-but-cheaper-and-much-higher-resolution

Pedro · May 22, 2012

It might seem as though with a technology with such transformative potential, a hardware breakthrough must have made it fundamentally possible. But Leap’s CEO Michael Buckwald tells CNET otherwise: the product is the fruits of tedious years of careful mathematical research. His CTO (and childhood friend) David Holz is apparently something of a math genius. “It's not as if we're using lots of processing power or some new hardware that just came on to the market," Buckwald said. "This is really about a fundamental scientific breakthrough, many eureka moments” that Holz accrued over a half-decade of painstaking work. Holz has clearly put much thought into the technology and its implications; “subtle motions are immediately occurring on the screen, so that there’s no distance between thought and response,” he said.
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Holz lists a range of possibilities for the technology: consumers might use it to browse the web; engineers could mould virtual clay; designers could draw precisely in 2-D or 3-D; and new gaming possibilities could evolve. One is hard-pressed to name a profession that might not be changed by this technology: surgeons and pilots, architects and painters, cobs and robbers alike will probably have their uses for it.

Holz and Buckwald are wise in this: they are the first to admit that they don’t yet understand the full ramifications of the device. Whereas Kinect hacks started as a rogue and semi-tolerated thing that Microsoft finally brought into the fold, Leap wants openness to be in its product’s DNA. “We want to create as vibrant a developer ecosystem as possible, and we're reaching out to developers” in many different fields, said Buckwald. They’re looking for a “few hundred” developers to get involved with their tech, and soon intend to send out as many as 20,000 free developer kits. When it’s officially released--in 2013, according to reports--will the Leap Effect quickly eclipse the Kinect Effect?
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http://www.technologyreview.com/blog/helloworld/27868/

Noob · May 22, 2012

Looks VERY good in those vids, now let's see how good they can integrate this into our devices.
If it ends up being awesome, for $70 it will be a bargain!

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The Leap: Gesture control like Kinect, but cheaper and much higher resolution

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