The world is a very busy place with micro information getting exchanged by seconds or less; people are developing new technologies everyday to make their daily life more convenient, time efficient and ultra complex technically. Devices which help us to be mobile and increase our efficiency in our daily life have been in great demand and are being developed rapidly. The next generation of mobile amenity has been named quite appropriately the Sixth sense; the amalgamation of modern day technology with a good ingenuity can give rise to such a multiplying effect gadget. Anyone wishes to live with such a dreamy gadget and make her/him 007’s club member. The most wonderful insipiration of this gadget on human civilization would be a complete 180 degree turnaround the way we educate ourselves and the inventive venture we earmark for ourselves – the availability of total information of every object in this universe in interactive mode will be something only God had at their disposal. My sincere forecast is that the new generation with good portion of grey matter should be able to complete PHD paper by 15 or 16 years by virtue of this would be the Sixth Sense.
'The Sixth Sense' is a wearable gestural interface that augments the physical world around us with digital information. It lets us use our own hand gestures to interact with that information. It frees information from its confines by seamlessly integrating it with reality, and thus making the entire world your computer. Developed by Mr. Pranav Mistry in collaboration with MIT Media Lab at TED, the Sixth Sense prototype hardware comprises of a pocket projector, a mirror and a camera. The hardware components are cobbled in a pendant like mobile wearable device. Both the projector and the camera are connected to the mobile computing device in the user’s pocket. The projector projects visual information enabling surfaces, walls and physical objects around us to be used as interfaces; while the camera recognizes and tracks user's hand gestures and physical objects using computer-vision based techniques. The software program processes the video stream data captured by the camera and tracks the locations of the colored markers (visual tracking fiducially) at the tip of the user’s fingers using simple computer-vision techniques. The movements and arrangements of these fiducially are interpreted into gestures that act as an interaction instructions for the projected application interfaces.
The Sixth Sense prototype implements several applications that demonstrate the usefulness, viability and flexibility of the system. The map application lets the user to navigate a map displayed on a nearby surface using hand gestures, similar to gestures supported by Multi-Touch based systems, letting the user zoom in, zoom out or pan using intuitive hand movements. The drawing application lets the user draw on any surface by tracking the fingertip movements of the user’s index fingers. The Sixth Sense also recognizes user’s freehand gestures (postures). For example, the Sixth Sense system implements a gestural camera that takes photos of the scene the user is looking at by detecting the ‘framing’ gesture. The user can stop by any surface or wall and flick through the photos he/she has taken. The Sixth Sense also lets the user draw icons or symbols in the air using the movement of the index fingers and recognizes those symbols as interaction instructions. For example, drawing a magnifying glass symbol takes the user to the map application or drawing a ‘@’ symbol lets the user check his mail. The Sixth Sense system also augments physical objects the user is interacting with by projecting more information about these objects projected on them. For example, a newspaper can show live video news or dynamic information can be provided on a regular piece of paper. Quite useful wouldn’t you say?
I found Sixth Sense, as the ultimate in communicating equipment with a real time communication of information with a multi-environment visual and audio effect. It could revolutionize the human dependency on meta-information. The work in progress should focus on question like the relevancy of information fetched or the quality of visual or the real time communication or more interactive interface or gesture mixed with voice or night-vision technology for input as well as output. The movement of hand with an iconic gesture should be extended to other kinds of streams. The most glaring would be a surface which can be scribbled or refresh with a laser for a blind or disabled person and it will be fourth or fifth sense for them. The alert or info system could be a small vibrating gadget with fix set of message encrypted in a definite type of vibration for a given alert or info. I was very much dismayed when the speaker said that the gadget would take at least ten years to complete. With the current prototype system costing approximately $350 to build this device holds great promise with its only competition being time itself who knows within ten years people could read and write the brain waves and make use of that to design a totally different equipment to develop the Sixth Sense.
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