MIT Develop Wear Ur World, 6th Sense Hand Gesture Gadget

MIT researcher Pattie Maes established a new gadget at a technology conference in South California. It’s called Wear Ur World (WUW) or 6th Sense & allows you to access information as though you always have a PC facing you, but controlled by hand gestures.


What the researchers have done is unite a number of standard gadgets including a mobile phone, projector and webcam, to form a brand new interaction experience. In its present form the battery-powered projector is attached to a hat, the webcam is hung around the neck & the mobile phone supplies the connection to the Internet.

 The wearer uses hand gestures joint with Wear Ur World (WUW) gadgets to perform actions. Thus, for example, they could make a circle above their wrist with the fingers of one hand. Wear Ur World would recognize this action & project a clock face on to their wrist. Create a picture frame with both your hands & WUW will take a picture as if it was a camera. Stand near a wall & you can get a projected desktop allowing you to open applications, view the pictures you have taken, or surf the ‘Net.

At the moment it’s just a prototype system, but as it uses off-the-shelf components the cost of creating one is presently $300 for the hardware involved.

Patty Maes told that other than letting some of people live out their fantasy of looking as cool as Tom Cruise in ‘Minority Report’ it can really let them connect as a 6th sense device with whatever is in front of them. They can use any surface; including their hand if nothing else is available, & interacts with the data. It’s very much a work in progress. Maybe in 10 years we’ll be here with the ultimate 6th-sense brain implant.

 

Matthew’s Opinion

I do not know about this being offered as a brain implant, however it could certainly be condensed down into a couple of glasses. The projector would be in the middle of the frame, the webcam just beneath it, & the mobile phone could be included into one of the arms that goes above your ear, or form a plug-in device. 

The key to this working with hand gestures is ensuring the projector and webcam move with your eyes. Putting them on glasses appears the easiest solution to that problem. Use WUW for a long time although, & your arms may get tired.

Decoupling you from carrying multiple gadgets & making the interface just your hands will offer a new level of freedom while it comes to accessing information. You’ll no longer have to find a PC to surf the ‘Net. If you want to get a picture there’s no more pulling a camera out of your pocket, turning it on, & waiting for it to be ready, you presently get picture frame what you want with your hands & it has done.

I hope it does not take a decade for such, WUW a device to appear while the researcher suggests, we may obtain them in a more crude form well-before then.