Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8522811

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Bringing the 'Minority Report' user interface to reality, without the gorilla-arm. We're a team of three research engineers developing fundamental, finger-precise hand-tracking and gesture recognition technology. We're looking for two more engineers to join us with experience in some of the following:

Computer graphics engineer:

- Solid understanding of the practical aspects of the computer graphics pipeline, shaders

- Comfortable with 3D math: vectors, matrices, rotations, projection, etc.

- Solid understanding of computer systems: caches, low-level optimization

- Game development background ideal, user interaction design a plus

- Comfortable with C/C++

Computer graphics / computer vision research engineer:

- Strong optimization or machine learning background

- Experience implementing algorithms on 3D geometry or 2D images

- Solid understanding of computer systems

- Research experience ideal

- Comfortable with C/C++

Contact: jobs@threegear.com

1. Gorilla arm -- keep your hands low. We support tracking and interactions literally 1cm above the keyboard / desk. We're mounting the camera above the monitor to achieve this.

2. We use gestures with built-in physical feedback. For instance, our click mechanism is a "pinch" which brings the thumb and index finger tips together. You can "feel" the physical touch event between your fingers when you trigger a command.

Shameless plug: an old video showing interaction with Reddit, Google Maps, browser. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U0WLh7WNxCI

We're actively working on supporting smaller / shorter-range sensors as well. You probably already know that in addition to the Kinect, a lot more depth cameras are on the market now: PrimeSense's Capri, SoftKinetic, PMD, Inuitive Tec, etc. All of these companies have introduced gum-stick sized sensors that can be embedded in a laptop or monitor.

We've done it: http://threegear.com Here's a video of tracking arbitrary hand motion using a Kinect-equivalent sensor: http://youtu.be/exZ6wukQCpk

Disclaimer: I work at 3Gear Systems (http://threegear.com), developing technology that possibly competes with the LEAP. We solve clicking by tracking the entire hand -- not just the straight finger.

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5650187

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Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5646262

Points: 1

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"DKE has tried to hack the game before, most memorably in the late 1940s when they buried explosive cord in a pattern that would spell out "MIT''. Unfortunately, Harvard discovered the hack and set up a trap. They arrested several students wearing coats lined with batteries. A dean, who had been informed about the hack after the arrest, went down to bail the students out. He pointed out to the detective that the battery-lined coats were only circumstantial evidence. At this point the dean opened his own battery-lined coat and declared "all Tech men carry batteries.''"

My point is that MIT presents itself as a place that defends hacking, and it has at least been lenient in the past.

There's a wealth of techniques from computer graphics on dealing with 3D point clouds, whereas even basic things like background subtraction are still hard (and not completely robust) in the 2D vision world.

I've just replied to the parent post with some discussion about how we differ in terms of features and technical approach.

We're also certainly cognizant of the price of our SDK. We hope that not too far down the road, we'll be able to spec out some cheaper hardware for our users.

Because our cameras are top mounted, our system is more comfortable / ergonomic. You don't have to lift your hands very high to interact, and your arms are always supported comfortably by the desk. We can enable convenient interactions right above the keyboard or even turn the desk itself into a touchscreen. Basically, our system is designed to be comfortable enough to use all day.

The second difference is more speculative, because it's hard to tell exactly what the Leap can or cannot do based off their video. Our system captures the entire hand rather than just the finger tips. This lets you use more natural gestures. For example, you can spin a virtual object by rotating your hand as if you were holding it (like in the sword-waving example in our video).

Finally, we're starting with commodity hardware you can get at immediately. It may look a little clunky right now, but we're experimenting with different cameras and different frames right now. Further down the road, it'll be a monitor / laptop clip-on or even built-in. Today, we're just releasing an SDK to let developers get started.

Thanks for the feedback! All of us at 3Gear spend more time than we should reading HN.

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4609062

Points: 28

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Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4607786

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Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4460711

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Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3808814

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