Mr.Spooner's Posterous

Witterings (too long for twitter) on various subjects

This is bonkers - SoundWave: Using the Doppler Effect to Sense Gestures

Gestures are becoming an increasingly popular means of interacting with computers. However, it is still relatively costly to deploy robust gesture-recognition sensors in existing mobile platforms. SoundWave is a real-time sensing technique that leverages a speaker and a microphone to robustly sense in-air gestures and motion around a device. It is capable of detecting a variety of gestures, and can directly control existing applications without requiring a user to wear any special sensors.
 

Kinect and shopping carts. wi-GO and Whole Foods

Two similar projects here but with slightly different objectives. I saw the Whole Foods demo recently and it reminded me of the wi-GO project that surfaced about a year earlier...

wi-GO is a project that seeks to unite the technological knowledge and liability in the construction of a common path toward integration and improved quality of life. With the aim of building a barrier-free society, the project wi-GO is a robot system based on sensor technology Kinect that enables the disabled person, but also the elderly and pregnant women, among others, carry objects without difficulty, comfortably and safely. Scheduled to follow the people, promotes mobility, reduces the inability of people with physical disabilities, ensuring integration and quality of life.
 

Whole Foods - a nice addition here is the scanning of products especially for people with allergies.
 

Help me Obiwan, you're my only hope - The Holoflector

Those clever chaps over at Microsoft Research have too much time on their hands. This augmented reality mirror and LCD screen work together to give us that Star Wars holographic projection experience we’ve been wishing to experience since we first saw it in 1977.

The integration of another device, in this case a Windows Phone, is sending sensor data to the application that can be added to the experience.

Lovely Loops. When you're in space, with a camera, you can catch some pretty spectacular imagery.

"NASA Goddard Space Flight Center is home to the nation's largest organization of combined scientists, engineers and technologists that build spacecraft, instruments and new technology to study the Earth, the sun, our solar system, and the universe.

We are also home to some of the most amazing images, visualizations and videos NASA has to offer! We'll share much of it with you here. Enjoy!"

http://www.flickr.com/photos/gsfc/