Can’t find that remote? No problem, at least if an engineering prototype TV system Toshiba are demonstrating at their booth ever makes it to the marketplace. The TV uses an infrared detector to locate a viewer’s hands in three-dimensional space. With the same kind of gestures that Tom Cruise used to control his police computer display in Minority Report, users can select images or video from a content database by zooming and panning through thumbnails. They can then control the playback of video using other gestures–holding your palm upright and then moving it back sharply was the equivalent of clicking on something, while holding up both hands and moving them together or apart zoomed in and out (a motion familiar to anyone who has used the iPhone or iPod Touch devices).
The system still needs a little fine tuning — it became tiring after a while to hold my hands in the right postures that the system could recognize, but it’s a clever idea that could allow for large interactive displays in places where it’s not practical to try and supply a remote or keyboard or use a touch-screen. Imagine using this kind of system in your kitchen to pause, rewind and start a cooking video for example, thereby avoiding getting a remote control covered in whatever ingredients happen to be coating your hands.
