We’re entering a new era of “natural user interfaces”
Not my words (though I’ve been know to say them)….these are the words of David Rowan, Editor of Wired UK as he introduced their latest issue which had Kudo Tsunoda of the Kinect team on the cover. Here’s what David had to say…
I’m in Cambridge, at Microsoft Research, and I’m looking at the future of man-machine interaction. The academics here -- specialists in probabilistic maths and machine learning -- have just cracked one of modern technology’s great challenges: how to track people as they’re moving so a computer appears intuitively to understand their actions. And though these softly spoken PhDs are too modest to say so, their work has huge implications in fields ranging from medicine to sport.
In the short term, the Cambridge research has allowed Microsoft to reinvent the Xbox 360 as a games console that does away with the controller. It’s made possible the Kinect entertainment system that, from next month, will allow you to control racing cars, white-water rafts and footballs simply by moving your body. If families warm to it, there’s no doubt that Kinect will give the Xbox the potential to reach a vast new mainstream audience and spawn a multi-billion dollar franchise. But there’s something else happening here that is of far greater long-term significance than gaming.
We’re entering a new era of “natural user interfaces”, whereby intelligent machines respond to our physical presence, our gestures, even our moods. By recognising you and responding to your voice and your movements, these systems will help you learn guitar more effectively, improve your running technique, even rehabilitate you after an operation. They will know how hot to run your bath, change TV channels when you wave, and no doubt cook your eggs to your liking at your spoken command
Game on. The full article is a breathless ride through the development of an impossible dream.