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The next stage in the motion control revolution could be upon us.
Kinect is able to do a pretty decent job of tracking our body movements, but it falls down when it comes to precision movement. That’s where Digits come into it.
New Scientist reports that the project, headed by Microsoft Research in Cambridge, uses an array of LEDs connected to a wrist brace that looks down the arm toward a user’s palm.
A laser is then shone on the fingers, with the reflections used to gauge any change in position. A camera also attached to the device then records this information and feeds the image back to the software that constructs an accurate 3D model.
Furthermore, the software is designed to track not only the precise position of a user’s fingers at any one time, but also their position across time – it recognises hand movements in sequence.
"We had to use technologies that are small and use less power," project leader David Kim stated, saying that from the offset the brief was to construct a technology that’s more accurate than Kinect.
"It shouldn’t interfere with daily activity, and we wanted to enable continuous interaction."
