This is freaking awesome: Two MIT guys, sixth-year grad student Robert Y. Wang of the Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Lab and Associate Professor Jovan Popovic, have come up with a brilliant and inexpensive hand-tracking interface. It's basically just a webcam and a flamboyantly-colored glove, the kind of thing a football player would beat you up for wearing in a small-town conservative high school:
For interested parties, Wang and Popovic have tons-o'-videos showing proof of concept and different applications of the technology here.
Any chance this will see mainstream application? Perhaps--Popovic's also a Senior Research Scientist at Adobe! Photoshop gloves, anyone?
Comments
I understand the multi-colors are for the computer to pickup on easier, but couldn't you do the same with one color or light variations of the same color and materials that the camera can see, but are not that noticeable to the human eye?
One type of material would be an IR reflective surface. There may be a need for an IR source for the camera to read, but it could work.