HP is the first computer maker to integrate the Leap Motion sensing technology in a laptop. Previously, it was available as an external USB device. The integrated version of Leap Motion is much sleeker and offers a more reliable and consistent interaction, due to the fixed position of the sensor in relation to the screen. At first, it may seem weird that the sensor is off-centered on the right, but after seeing a live two-handed demo, I was reassured that it would work fine. (more…)
This week the folks at Leap Motion have made clear their intention to dive ever-deeper into the world of high-powered electronics, hitting a real-deal HP notebook here for starters. This is the first of what may be a series of HP/Leap Motion connections, given their announcement of co-development earlier this year. This is the HP […]
Ever since the initial teasers for the Leap Motion controller, there have been plenty of manufacturers getting ready to build it right into their laptops. Well that day has finally arrived. It’s just too bad the first is kinda big.
As BlackBerry will now readily admit, gesture-based touchscreens have taken over from physical keyboards in the mobile space. But there’s still plenty of plastic keys on and around PCs. Not that people aren’t trying to change that. The Leap Motion controller is one well-funded device that’s attempting to move things along by letting you swipe in mid-air to interact with a terminal, rather than clicking on a boring old mouse.
Well, here’s another: Haptix uses twin cameras to peek at what your hands are doing and turn their actions into input signals. It supports both in-air gestures — a la Leap Motion — but also interprets 2D gestures (such as pinch to zoom) made on any flat surface. In other words, it can turn a tabletop into a touchscreen. Haptix’s creators, who have just kicked off a Kickstarter campaign seeking $100,000 to help fund manufacturing costs, are Darren Lim and Lai Xue. Lim is a 2013 Thiel Fellow and Xue has ‘used to be the youngest engineer at Intel‘ on his CV.
Supporting both 2D and 3D gestures means Haptix users can rest their hands while using it — thereby heading off any complains about tired wrists, which have been levelled at Leap Motion in (the mostly lukewarm — okay, damning) reviews. It also means the surface of a laptop keyboard can be used as a touchscreen instead of having to reach over for a trackpad or mouse. However just offering 2D gesture sensing wasn’t enough either, says Lim, arguing that the 3D sensing element is essential to making the device feel “intuitive”. “It’s crucial to see your fingers on the screen,” he adds.
Thus Haptix also supports mid-air swipes/typing too, so it’s not tethered to a flat surface if you don’t want to be. It’s a cake-and-eat it approach — with the only limitation being that gestures need to be performed within its field of vision. Currently the Kickstarter prototype Haptix has a 120 degree field of view but Lim and Xue are hoping to expand that to 150 degrees when/if they get to ship product.
And before you ask, Haptix does have an algorithm to detect when a user is actually typing on a physical keyboard to avoid confusing real typing with some other input gesture. It also includes an infrared camera so it can still function in dingy environments, a la Microsoft’s Kinect peripheral for XBox.
As well as adding a gesture interface layer to laptops and computers, Haptix’s creators reckon it could be used by people wanting to control an Internet-connected TV. Albeit, that requires rigging up the device so that it covers the appropriate patch of your coffee table. Which looks pretty inelegant, judging by their product shots. The design of Haptix certainly seems better suited to closer use-cases — such as being clipped onto a laptop screen where it can point down at the keyboard.
One laptop/PC use-case its creators envisage for Haptix is being able to optimise the work flow of people who have to manipulate a lot of data in spreadsheets — such as accountants. Once it’s affixed to their computers these Excel ninjas would no longer need to shuttle their hand back and forth to a mouse/trackpad but could perform all those essential micro-mousing movements just by sliding their number-loving fingers over the keyboard. (If ‘Kinect for accountants’ can’t rock the accounts department, nothing can.)
Haptix currently works with Windows and Ubuntu, but Android (for smart TV integration) and OS X support are also in the works. Lim and Xue are also planning on releasing an API — assuming their invention flies — so that developers can start playing around and crafting dedicated apps for Haptix. In the meanwhile it integrates with Windows via the system’s support for multitouch inputs — and Ubuntu via a driver that enables multitouch function. Lim claims Haptix’s performance is not at all laggy, and feels “as responsive as using a mouse”.
The Kickstarter campaign is offering the Haptix device itself for an early bird price of $59. There’s also a $25 pledge for people wanting to try turning their own webcam into a gesture-sensing input device using software based on the algorithms driving Haptix.
It’s been two weeks since Leap Motion appeared in the wild, and while it’s far from being a perfect piece of hardware, the possibilities are pretty damn interesting. So far, most of the attention-getting apps have dealt with music. But there are plenty of other cool developments happening with the device, too.
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Leap Motion launched its groundbreaking motion detection module on Monday, allowing anyone to connect a little box to their Mac or Windows computer that can detect gestures more precisely than Microsoft Kinect can, for a mere $80. Eventually, Leap Motion technology will be integrated into computers, so you won’t even need to buy a separate box in order to wave your hands in the air to select, control, create, and interact with music.
At long last, folks around the world are able to check out Leap Motion for themselves, where this happens to be a crown jewel release by the motion-control software and hardware company, where they intend to change the way human-computer […]
The much-anticipated Leap Motion Controller began shipping to pre-order customers today, as reviews of the input device hit the web. The startup behind the controller has done an impressive job raising interest in the novel gadget, and sold an incredible amount of pre-orders to early adopters. But reviews so far have been mostly lukewarm, citing experiences that don’t necessarily live up to the hype.
The Leap Motion controller went back to the drawing board and put off its wide launch to spend more time in a wider beta in order to get the consumer experience right. It sounds like they were focusing on the right area with that effort, as most reviews say the Leap Motion experience is a little underwhelming, or at least something that’s an admirable distraction but not useful for truly productive usage.
Leap Motion has done a good job of getting a decent selection and range of apps in the Airspace dedicated software store for its device at launch, so it has that going for it. But the problem here appears to be that all of the apps leave reviewers feeling more like they’ve just experienced a gimmick, than the next generation of computer interaction.
What Leap Motion can do now (scrolling and paging through apps and virtual environments, completing next and back functions) is a far cry from what it will likely eventually be able to do, however. The Leap Motion and devices like it are a long bet, and I think the companies behind them understand this; we’ll see a bit of what they’re capable of shown off in tech demos and current generation software, but what they’re offering is an entirely new paradigm for thinking about digital interaction. That means it’ll take time before developers wrap their head around what kind of software experience fits this mould.
Adapting Fruit Ninja or Google Earth to something like 3D gesture control is a simple enough process, one that’s opportunistic without being truly innovative. Some might say Leap Motion should’ve stayed in beta until it could begin to bring about the change needed to show its controller off to its full potential, but someone had to get the tech to market. It’ll grow accordingly, though I’m curious to see if consumer interest will be enough to sustain it through its awkward adolescence based on these initial, hopeful but ultimately reserved consumer-oriented reviews.
Leap Motion isn’t convinced that a touchscreen is enough: instead, it wants you to start waving. While gesturing wildly at your electronics may bring to mind Jean Michel Jarre or trying to play a theramin, the Leap Motion controller is a whole new ball-game. Little larger than a packet of gum, the USB peripheral sits in front of your keyboard and tracks everything that moves in the space around it, with the theory being that reaching out and grabbing a virtual interface is a whole lot more natural than pushing a mouse around or even swiping at a touchscreen. Is the reality so clean-cut? Read on for the full SlashGear review.
Hardware and Setup
Considering the amount of cleverness going on inside, the Leap Motion controller itself is relatively nondescript. Measuring 3 x 1.2 x 0.5 inches, the silver and black box is designed to sit in front of your keyboard, in-between where your wrists would normally be. A USB connection feeds out the left side, though if you’re prone to poor ergonomics while typing, you might find it gets in the way of your left wrist. Alternatively, you can put it above the keyboard (assuming you’re on a desktop machine) though you’ll have to reach a little further forward to work within the “sweet spot” of tracking.
That area is actually around 8 cubic feet, though it’s shaped more like a dome with the Leap Motion at its base than a cube. It extends roughly a foot off the desk, and around a foot and a half across, and is capable of tracking not only your hands, but each individual finger and in fact the movement of each joint.
So far, we’re talking about a pretty advanced Kinect, but where Leap Motion’s system differs from the camera-based system Microsoft’s Xbox 360 uses is in the accuracy. The controller may be tiny, but it can still track each finger’s movement to up to 1/100th of a millimeter, with a refresh rate of 290fps. That’s sufficient, the company promises, to track handwriting or sketching if you hold a pen or pencil above the controller, grabbing even the tiniest of flicks and flourishes.
Setup is straightforward. The box itself plugs into your computer – either a Windows 7 or 8 PC, or a Mac running OS X 10.7 Lion or above – with one of the two included USB cables, with Leap Motion bundling a 60-inch cord for those trying to reach a tower case under the desk, and a shorter 24-inch cord for those with a closer laptop.
The light on the front of the controller goes green, and then it’s a case of visiting Leap Motion’s online account page to download the driver software. There’s also a straightforward “Getting Started” video which walks through some of the possibilities, and then – when everything has installed – creating an account for Airspace, Leap Motion’s app download store.
Apps at that store are downloaded through the Airspace Home launcher, and there’ll be free and paid options to choose between. Prices for the paid apps range from $0.99 through to $99.99 (that getting you AeroMIDI, which does actually turn the Leap Motion controller into a Jean Michel Jarre-style MIDI motion controller that works with soft or hard synths), though $4.99 to $9.99 is more common. Not everything is available for both PC and Mac, and right now in total there are around 72 titles to choose from.
Software & Apps
The first app most people will try is probably Touchless, available in versions for both platforms, and which effectively turns your hand into a mouse. Moving your hand in the space above the controller moves the mouse on-screen; stabbing a finger forward is a click, while swiping with multiple fingers extended works for scrolling. You can also pinch-zoom, again in mid-air, and there are different levels of precision to choose between – depending on how adept you are – which prioritize either precision, speed, or a combination of both.
It does take a little getting used to, but not much, and soon we were swiping, snatching at icons, flicking webpages around, and generally treating our Mac like it was a prop from Minority Report. We had best results when navigating through the browser, music playlists, or image galleries; it works in more precision-oriented apps like Photoshop, but it’ll take a little longer for our muscle-memory to retrain from a more traditional mouse or trackpad for those purposes.
The rest of the apps range from music players, through simple utilities like a movement-tracking biometric security lock, through art programs, to games, which dominate the Airspace store. There are also some science titles, including dissecting a virtual frog with your fingers. Integration with Google Earth and Nokia’s HERE Maps has also been included, so you can gesture through landscapes for instance.
It’s the sort of thing that works better when shown on video than in text, so we’ve picked out some of the highlights in each category to show you exactly what sort of movements are involved.
Better than a Touchscreen?
Used to be, a keyboard and mouse was enough. Now touch is the big new theme in computing, even though not every company agrees that it makes as much sense on the desktop as it does on, say, a tablet or smartphone. Apple is a notorious hold-out, but even with various PC manufacturers putting touchscreens on Windows 8 machines, there’s still plenty of models sold without.
In many ways, reaching out and stroking your computer’s display really isn’t ergonomic. There are often times when the minimal hand-movement of flicking between keyboard and mouse/trackpad is far more efficient. Scrolling through webpages and articles, meanwhile, is a more natural home for touch, but again the usability of holding a hand out to do the navigating is questionable.
Leap Motion’s system won’t quite address that – you’re still holding out your hand for extended periods, even if it’s not to reach all the way to the display – but with a broader area of activity than two-dimensional touch it feels less of a chore over extended periods. Again, even with Touchless we found some apps were more Leap Motion-friendly than others, but the ergonomics of flicking a hand over your work-area in general are far more flexible.
Wrap-Up
How useful Leap Motion’s controller is depends on whether you try to use it as a mouse-replacement or as an addition to your desktop. We’d argue that, in this early iteration at least, the latter makes more sense: there were times we quickly went back to using our existing peripherals, but equally there were moments when casually gesturing through the browser or Google Earth felt far more natural using our hands.
At $79, the Leap Motion controller is roughly the same price as a high-end peripheral like a gaming mouse. That seems on the reasonable side to us, assuming developer interest continues and we see not only more titles in the Airspace store, but more standalone apps and games integrate with the high-precision tracking. Eventually, we can envisage a time when Leap Motion’s technology is simply built into your laptop or keyboard; until then, eighty bucks is a low-cost way of bringing some sci-fi magic to your desktop.
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HP is the first computer maker to integrate the Leap Motion sensing technology in a laptop. Previously, it was available as an external USB device. The integrated version of Leap Motion is much sleeker and offers a more reliable and consistent interaction, due to the fixed position of the sensor in relation to the screen. At first, it may seem weird that the sensor is off-centered on the right, but after seeing a live two-handed demo, I was reassured that it would work fine. (more…)
