Techno Babble

Beyond is a research project by Jinha Lee (and Hiroshi Ishii) from the MIT Media Lab.

http://tangible.media.mit.edu/person.php?recid=81

The full title of the project is Beyond  - A collapsible Input device for Direct 3D Manipulation beyond the Screen.

http://tangible.media.mit.edu/project.php?recid=139

It explores a technique for drawing in 3D on a 2D surface using an input device which collapses onto itself,  giving the impression of being pushed into the screen – watch the enclosed video to get a better idea of what’s happening.

It will be interesting to see whether this technique will be of any use in 3D CAD software. Towards the end of the video ( 1:41 ) is a demonstration of how to create simple extruded shapes.

Researchers from the MIT Computer Science and Artifical Intelligence Lab have designed a system that can recognise gestures made with a multi-coloured gloved hand.

You can see the accuracy and latency of the tracking in the following video

One feature of the system is an algorithm which was developed to rapidly search graphics data in a database.

A webcam is used to capture an image of the glove. The image is reduced in size to 40 x 40 pixels and used to search a database containing digital models of a gloved hand in a range of different positions. If a match is found, the corresponding hand position is determined directly, thus eliminating the need to perform complex calculations to determine the relative positions of the hand and fingers.

Calibration, for different users, has been simplified so that the user only has to place their hand on an 8.5×11 inch piece of paper on a flat surface in front of the webcam.

More details at

http://people.csail.mit.edu/rywang/hand

and from MIT news at

http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2010/gesture-computing-0520.html

Bokode: Imperceptible Visual Tags for Camera Based Interaction from a Distance

A paper presented by members of the Camera Culture Group from the MIT Media Lab at the recent Siggraph 2009, a Bokode is a new kind of small barcode.

Current optical tags, such as barcodes, must be read within a short range and the codes occupy valuable physical space on products. This is a new camera based interaction solution where an ordinary camera can be used to detect small optical tags from a relatively large distance. Tags can be shrunk to 3mm visible diameter, and unmodified ordinary cameras several meters away can be set up to decode the identity plus the relative distance and angle.

More details at the website

http://web.media.mit.edu/~ankit/bokode/