GestureTek announced some significant new initiatives in its mobile phone business this week at CTIA.

As we’ve discussed in the past, GestureTek’s approach to motion revolves around optical sensing, and in the mobile arena the company leverages the built-in cameras found in nearly every phone today to provide motion sensing without any additional hardware requirements (beyond sufficient memory and processor power).

The new announcements at CTIA include:

* A gesture-based photo viewing application for Windows Mobile devices: with this system installed, users can select photos on their Windows Mobile smart phone and use zoom, pan and otherwise navigate the photo using simple gestures. This system is available to carriers now.
* A gesture-enabled GPS navigation system: currently available in Japan (where NTT DoCoMo is a major customer) and available now for other carriers, this system lets users manipulate mapping/navigation applications with gestures rather than key entries.
* A still-under-development gesture-based Web browsing platform: GestureTek announced that they are working with several software vendors to incorporate GestureTek’s motion sensing technology into mobile device Web browsers, allowing users to zoom in and out and navigate Web pages using only motion.
* A text messaging (and text entry) system under development with Iota Wireless: this system is designed to speed up the entry of text messages (and potentially any text entry) on phones without QWERTY keypads, by allowing users to scroll through predictive text entries (using a number pad) quickly by simply tilting the device in the direction of the desired letter or word. Video below:

All of these applications are a natural evolution of where GestureTek (and motion on the mobile device in general) has been going — moving beyond games to a more general phone interface. The interesting thing here is that GestureTek is, to a degree, laying down the gauntlet to Apple’s iPhone and its almost uncountable number of followers in the “touch” UI space — phones with touch-based UIs were thick on the ground at CTIA this week, with just about every major manufacturer and carrier laying out a touch strategy. GestureTek described their announcements as “iPhone-like Functionality With a Touch-Free Interface”, and there’s a lot to be said for the lower BOM that GestureTek’s approach offers relative to touch.

That said, we’re still in the early days of mobile device interface when it comes to moving beyond the “D-pad” type interfaces and the roles of motion vs. touch are still up in the air. Apple, for example, despite all the emphasis on touch, has clearly hedged its bets and utilized both systems. This is an area we’re going to be exploring more — if you’ve got an opinion, we’d love to hear it.

Full press release from GestureTek is below the jump: (more…)

NewTeeVee posted an article earlier this week that discusses technology being evaluated by Comcast to use embedded cameras in the set top box to do user recognition — as a mechanism for providing customized content on a per-user basis. A key quote from the article says:

The idea being that if you turn on your cable box, it recognizes you and pulls up shows already in your profile or makes recommendations. If parents are watching TV with their children, for example, parental controls could appear to block certain content from appearing on the screen. Kunkel also said this type of monitoring is the “holy grail” because it could help serve up specifically tailored ads. Yikes.

The “Yikes” is key here, because the article predictably generated a rash of responses down the lines of “Big Brother is watching me, and he’s at Comcast!”. So much so that Comcast exec posted responses to alleviate concerns that Comcast would actually be tracking faces and storing them — and correlating them with programming choices and more. Instead, the system which was being discussed was more down the lines of a gesture-recognition motion controller than a “say cheese” face recognition system.

So what to make of this? Well this isn’t the first time that we’ve heard a vendor or service provider think about some sort of biometric recognition as a mechanism for identifying the user, and serving up customized content. And — putting aside folks’ obvious concerns about privacy — this idea really seems to have some legs to us.

For example, when the kids are watching the TV, let the set top and the system identify them as such — to activate parental controls, to steer them to a customized program guide with only their favorite (and approved) channels. Or let the biometrics serve as part of an authentication and authorization system — so the babysitter can watch TV, but not order up the $65 Ultimate Fighting Challenge PPV while the parents are at dinner.

At the same time, we can see that despite the fact that consumers face an ever eroding base of privacy on a daily basis (between the trails they leave online, the vast credit databases built on most people and specific examples like giving away details about their spending habits with grocery store “club cards”), there are some lines that people may not want to cross when it comes to their privacy. We may get photographed dozens of times a day by security cameras as we go about our daily business — but a camera in our living room that’s not in our control may be a step too far.

For these technologies to be accepted there will probably have to be some sort of compromise. If a visually-based system is used, a provider is going to need to provide some strong privacy policies and some excellent customer education to let customers know exactly what is and isn’t recorded about them: is my face being recorded or not? Is it just recording my motions and gestures in a way that can identify me? What if I wander in front of the TV set after a shower? Does the authentication happen in the set top, or in the network? What’s stored and what’s not? The list goes on.

We’ve also seen some vendors of mechanical motion sensing systems talk about their ability to similar user identification — without the psychologically intimidating camera pointing at the user. If the simple act of picking up and using a remote can be mapped to a user profile without a camera staring at the user HAL-like, perhaps that’s the best approach to take.

Let us know what you think.

Rock’N’Scroll and Accelon are two motion-enabling technologies from KEYnetik that promise to expand the world of hand-held motion.

Rock’N’Scroll is already out there. Accelon – a nifty, dual-sensor (accelerometer) technology – is just coming out of their development laboratory.

Rock’N’Scroll can work on many different devices, but the easiest to understand is its use on a cell phone. A three-axis accelerometer is embedded into a phone. The enabling software is free and downloadable from the KEYnetik website. The customer installs Rock’N’Scroll on a phone. A simple flick of the wrist moves the user from one icon on the screen to another. The system is able to filter out interference by determining the radius of rotation; so big, sweeping gestures are ignored by the system while little flicks are interpreted as requests for movement from one icon to another.

Rock’N’Scroll is a single sensor application available for Symbian S60 V3 phones with accelerometers (Nokia N95, N95-8GB, N82, and a few others). Beta 1 was released on February 29; Beta 2 is underway. Some of the features of Beta 1 include tilt scrolling, flick menu navigation, screen rotation, push/pull gestures for selections and exit.

Rock’N’Scroll provides same features as a combined gyroscope and accelerometer, allowing for all six degrees of freedom, according to Gene Shkolnikov, vice president and chief operating officer at the Northern Virginia-based firm.

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Johnny Chung Lee’s VR Wii-hack turned a lot of heads when he released a YouTube video of it earlier this year. Our Curt Harler had a chance to talk with Lee about his hacks, his research, and where he sees motion sensing going:

Johnny Chung Lee turned Wii inside-out (or, perhaps it was back-end front) in a clever Wii hack that allows viewers to see 3-D video on a TV set .

Lee is a doctoral candidate at Carnegie-Mellon University in Pittsburgh. He did an undergraduate degree in Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of Virginia and then went into the PhD program in Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) at Carnegie-Mellon. HCI focuses on the relationship between people and technology, and how they can interact with each other.

“Motion sensing and motion capture is a very rich form of input and I’ve enjoyed finding opportunities to include it in my work when it makes sense,” he says.

His focus is primarily on developing new interface technology such as new sensing approaches, input devices, or control systems. “I do a bit of hardware and software,” he explains.
“Computers are one of the most versatile tools for doing just about anything these days,” Lee continues. “If you know how to shape the hardware and the software to your desires, you can execute most of the things you can imagine.”

“Dreaming up new ways to interact with and control information is fun for me and, fortunately, that’s my job,” he says.
(more…)

Universal Electronics, Inc. (UEI), and Hillcrest Labs today announced that UEI is licensing Hillcrest’s Freespace motion sensing and pointing technology. UEI, if you’re not familiar with them, is one of the clear leaders in the remote control space — with both retail (the popular One For All and Nevo brands) and OEM solutions (for a variety of CE and set top vendors).

While the companies haven’t yet gotten into detail as to where Hillcrest’s technology will end up, this seems to us to be a big win for Hillcrest, as UEI can bring Hillcrest’s motion control technology to a range of customers in both the manufacturer and service provider camps.

The full press release is below the jump:
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An enterprising Nokia Tablet Enthusiast has brewed up a “Tiltstick” motion sensing sensor that plugs into the tablet’s USB port and provides 2D motion sensing via a standard ADI or Freescale accelerometer (with 3D support inherent in the design, but not used in the example shown.

Dr. Till Harbaum has done this before, according to his Web site — having incorporated motion sensing technologies on the Palm Platform in the past — and the current hack leverages standard Windows HID (Human Interface Device) drivers, and can work on a variety of platforms beyond the Nokia tablet.

You can read his detailed description of the project here – including downloads for hardware schematics and firmware, should you wish to roll your own.

YouTube of the TiltStick in action below:

Apple announced its iPhone SDK today and hopefully not lost in all the big news about Exchange ActiveSync support (we can hear millions of corporate email users cheering now) was the big role that motion control played.

Apple’s new SDK incorporates full access to the 3D accelerometer within the iPhone (along with the Multitouch UI).

One of Apple’s demos at the SDK Roadmap event today was a game developed by Apple called Touch Fighter — with the interface based upon accelerometers (as well as touch).

EA Mobile also demo’d a forthcoming game called Spore, which again uses the accelerometer for game play.

And one more thing (to steal from Steve Jobs): Sega also showed an iPhone port of a game (which they described as “not a mobile game, but a console game”) called Super Monkey Ball which, like the others, uses motion as its primary input mechanism.

We’re excited about the gaming apps, but we’re also very curious about how developers can integrate motion into other applications on the iPhone.

You can watch the video of Apple’s presentation here.

We’ve long been proponents of the concept that motion-sensing interfaces bring a lot of folks to the digital table who were previously left out. Using instinctive interfaces like pointing, rather than difficult learned interfaces like game pads and 50 button remote controls can let folks who are physically unable (or who just feel like they can’t master the interface) get into gaming or digital TV services or what have you.

An example of this which we often bring up in our strategy presentations is senior gaming. Do a search on YouTube for “senior” and “Wii” and you’ll see what we mean. It’s an area where we think some serious academic research might come up with some really compelling statistics in favor of motion control (if you’re doing such research, we’d love to talk to you).

We just came across another article today, this one from the Connecticut Republican-American newspaper is a great example of what’s happening in the senior’s market. Money quote:

“I haven’t bowled in years,” she said. “This is so exciting.”

She wasn’t talking about a new bowling lane at the senior center. Groth is part of a growing number of seniors who are playing the Nintendo Wii game system, which is also popular among children and teens. It requires players to make arm and sometimes leg motions in order to see results on the screen. Senior centers all over the state, including those in Beacon Falls and Torrington, as well as rehabilitation facilities, are purchasing the systems for their patrons. The Lions Club in Woodbury is donating one to the new senior center in that town.

If you need to be convinced about the cross-generational appeal of motion, we suggest you drop by your local senior center too.

Without being able to read what’s happening on the screen (our Kanji is a bit rusty to say the least), we still find this pretty compelling. The ability to point at the screen and scroll through listings rapidly should be an obvious benefit to anyone dealing with a grid of 500+ channels and a remote with a set of directional keys today.

At the same time, this is obviously a baby step towards motion-enabling the TV. That’s because the guide itself isn’t really all that different than the hierarchical grids present on every TV guide (printed or onscreen) for the past forty years. The power of motion-sensing comes from (among other things) the ability to get to content directly — rather than limiting yourself to tediously moving through content one item at a time. We’re big fans of systems that take a more visual (objects) rather than textual (grid) approach to navigation onscreen — when combined with a motion-sensing interface device you’ve then got a system which can dramatically increase a user’s ability to find the content they want, when they want it.

Video via Gamevideos.com

Nintendo has launched a Wii TV Guide “channel” for the Japan market. The new channel , which Nintendo says won’t be available in the U.S. or E.U. markets (let’s hope they change their minds) provides a couple of key features: first, it leverages the Wiimote as a TV remote (using the sensor bar as an IR transmitter to send control signals to the TV); second it incorporates some elements of social networking into the TV guide — allowing users to rate shows, send recommendations to friends and even to send reminders about shows to email or SMS addresses.

We think that this is a pretty significant development from Nintendo — as we’ve said before, Nintendo can really capitalize on its enormous lead in motion control only if it expands its platform beyond just games. We’d love to see this capability opened up for other developers to come up with solutions that can work in more television systems in more countries and on more platforms (like cable or satellite).

Via Wiifanboy