Hasta La Gadget!

An AR heads-up display wasn’t the only navigation hardware Pioneer showed off at CEATEC 2012. The firm also took the opportunity to tear the wraps off a new line of gesture-controlled Raku Navi GPS units. With the infrared-powered Air Gesture feature, drivers can wave their hand in front of a device to pull up a menu with commands such as setting their home or a personal haunt as a destination or skipping to the next tune on a playlist. Once a hand is retracted, the menu will be replaced with the usual map interface. Though the solution isn’t completely hands-free, horizontal hand waves can be assigned one of ten different functions. Japanese store shelves will be lined with two dashboard-embeddable units by mid-October, while four console-independent models will join them in early November. As of now, there’s no word if the hardware will make the pilgrimage stateside.

Filed under: GPS, Transportation

Pioneer’s latest Raku Navi GPS units take commands from hand gestures originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 07 Oct 2012 04:56:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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What you’re about to see, should you choose to click the source link below, is far from perfect. On the other hand, it’s clearly had a lot of effort and expertise put into it — not only by HTML5-savvy coders, but also by a troupe of performers from the Cirque du Soleil. It’s called Movi.Kanti.Revo, which is a fancy way of saying Move.Sing.Dream, and it involves navigating through an ethereal and slightly laggy landscape using only swaying gestures, your singing voice (mournful sobbing sounds also worked for us) and a bunch of APIs that conveniently fail to work on FireFox, Safari or Internet Explorer. It’s well-suited to those with a mic and webcam, preferably sitting in a open-plan and bully-ridden workplace, and if you don’t like it there’s always Bastion.

Filed under: Internet, Software, Alt

Chrome experiment explores new types of navigation, degrees of embarrassment originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 20 Sep 2012 10:22:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Tablets are for touching — that much is understood. But Qualcomm’s making it so your fingers will be mostly optional, thanks to the Kinect-like powers of its Snapdragon CPU. To highlight this, the company’s uploaded a couple of videos to its YouTube channel that showcase two practical use case scenarios for the gesture tech: gaming and cooking. Using the device’s front-facing camera, users will one day soon be able to control onscreen avatars, page forward and back through recipes, setup profiles and even wake their slates all with simple hand or head movements. Alright, so tactile-free navigation of this sort isn’t exactly new, but it does up open up the tablet category to a whole new world of innovation. Head past the break to peek the demos in action.

Continue reading Qualcomm demos touch-free gesture control for tablets powered by Snapdragon (video)

Filed under: Tablet PCs, Software

Qualcomm demos touch-free gesture control for tablets powered by Snapdragon (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 06 Aug 2012 16:22:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Using Microsoft’s Kinect to replace a mouse is often considered the Holy Grail of developers; there have been hacks and other tricks to get it working well before Kinect for Windows was even an option. A lead Technical Evangelist for Microsoft in France, David Catuhe, has just provided a less makeshift approach. The 1.2 update to his Kinect Toolbox side project introduces hooks to control the mouse outright, including ‘magnetic’ control to draw the mouse from its original position. To help keep the newly fashioned input (among other gestures) under control, Catuhe has also taken advantage of the SDK 1.5 release to check that the would-be hand-waver is sitting and staring at the Kinect before accepting any input. The open-source Windows software is available to grab for experimentation today, so if you think hands-free belongs as much on the PC desktop as in a car, you now have a ready-made way to make the dream a reality… at least, until you have to type.

Filed under: Peripherals, Software

Kinect Toolbox update turns hand gestures into mouse input, physical contact into distant memory originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 01 Aug 2012 03:09:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Apple’s former iAd VP (and Quattro co-founder) Andy Miller only just took a job as a general partner at Highland Capital last year after leaving the gang in Cupertino, but he’s now already moving on to another fairly high profile gig. Leap Motion has announced today that Miller will become its new President and CEO COO, placing him in a central role at a company that’s facing the rather difficult task of actually delivering the goods after wowing most everyone with its new gesture control technology. As Fortune notes, however, the move doesn’t come as a complete surprise. Highland Capital is backing Leap, and Miller himself has reportedly been spending about 80 percent of his time on the company over the past few months. In a statement, Miller said that he’s “been fortunate to work with some of the most influential figures and companies in the technology industry, and I’m as excited about the Leap as I’ve ever been about a technology,” adding that the “potential for the Leap is limitless, as it is going to fundamentally change the way we interact with so many devices in our lives.”

Update: Leap Motion has reached out and informed us that Miller will be President and COO, reporting to current CEO and co-founder Michael Buckwald. The official press release can be found after the break.

Continue reading Leap Motion taps former Apple iAd VP Andy Miller to be President and COO

Filed under: Peripherals

Leap Motion taps former Apple iAd VP Andy Miller to be President and COO originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 17 Jul 2012 13:58:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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