Monday, May 21, 2012

Leap Motion Announces New Gesture Interface

San Francisco-based Leap Motion announced its new gesture control system, said to be 100-200 times more accurate than all the existing gesture recognition systems. The Leap is claimed to be able to distinguish individual fingers and track movements down to a 1/100th of a millimeter. The 3D interaction space is limited by 8 cubic feet. The Leap system retail price is going to be $70.

There is now word on the Leap operating principle. The company's Yutube video demos the new system is action:



The initial technology ideas came from Leap Motion's co-founder and CTO David Holz. David was working on a PhD in mathematics from UNC Chapel Hill and left to pursue Leap Motion. Before that, he was conducting research for NASA on fluid mechanics.

CNET publishes an interview with Leap's CEO Michael Buckwald. Leap Motion announced $12.75M in Series A funding led by Andy Miller of Highland Capital Partners earlier this month.

Leap intends to create an ecosystem with a large number of third-party applications, as opposed to trying to build and popularize those apps itself. "We want to create as vibrant a developer ecosystem as possible, and we're reaching out to developers in all sorts of" fields, CEO Michael Buckwald told CNET. Leap Motion is looking for a few hundred developers, but intends to expand the program by sending out between 15,000 and 20,000 free developer kits.

Thanks to CM for the info!

12 comments:

  1. I found no patents for David Holz, ocuspec, or leap motion.
    My guess is stereo CMOS, but this is based only on the shape of the device, low price point, and suspicious lack of overlap in the demos.

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  2. even a light curtain with a CMOS sensor ...
    The objects on the top will reflect the light and be seen the sensor as a bright segments. Just a guess.

    -yang ni

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  3. actually it's neither stereo CMOS, nor light curtain. But yang ni is closer to the reality.

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  4. maybe its time-of-flight?

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  5. Another guess: a fly laser spot together with a single PIN photodiode detector ?? Am I closer :)

    -yang ni

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  6. "illuminating an unknown object with lights of different colors and positions, we use the shadows it casts to estimate its position and shape"

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  7. "illuminating an unknown object with lights of different colors and positions, we use the shadows it casts to estimate its position and shape"

    But the device has a visible-black window-filter, how can you use different colors ??? Do you use only different wavelength in NIR ?

    -yang ni

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  8. 1/100mm sounds bogus.. I think Stereo CMOS too, expect variance based on object reflectivity..

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  9. http://www.engadget.com/2012/05/25/leap-motion-gesture-control-technology-hands-on/

    it seems to be LED + CMOS Sensors, same as many other 3D systems

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  10. Similar Kinect but resolution improve.

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  11. I wonder if this 10µm accuracy in 3D space and how is it estimated? It sounds very good. Unfortunately company does not answer. :) Has anyone already seen the device in action?

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  12. I guess it is just closer to gamers finger instead sensor being located near display.
    Meaning some Kinect type of sensor which located right below the gesture input (finger or hand).
    Resolution depending on angle and distance.

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