Using Gestures for Mobile Interaction

The iPhone has received all the attention for its intuitiveness and display area that makes mobile internet access effortless. New technologies based on interpreting gestures could take this innovation much further.

An excerpt from BusinessWeek:

GestureTek’s software allows a camera-enabled device to recognize gestures. Using this technology, Japanese consumers can already flick their phone to the right to scroll through digital menus. And, come early 2009, customers of Japanese carrier NTT DoCoMo will be able to open and close their fingers to zoom in or out of images and maps displayed on their phones.

Gesture based interaction has immense potential. as exhibited by the above mentioned company’s product which provides marketing companies with technology that makes displays react to human gestures. The company recently announced a motion-control input technology that would be available on phones from Verizon and Japan’s NTT DoCoMo

An excerpt form InfoWorld:

Games are the obvious “first splash” for the Wii-like tech for mobile, but as mobile applications like maps develop, the possibilities for turning mobiles into control devices seem endless to me.

John Vincent describes scrolling on maps, and zooming and panning, as obvious applications. And the iPhone with GestureTek technology could be very cool, with a possible “3D finger” capability for touchscreens.

The interesting aspect of this technology is that it does not need a high-end phone for implementation since the hardware consists of only a camera with the associated software taking care of discerning the gestures. Hence there’s a lot of expectation from the technology once gets deployed on high-end phones. The gesture detection adds a level of depth to the interactive experience that one has come to expect from mobiles (a lot of credit for this goes to the iPhone). Also the applications of this technology have no limits.

What might be emerging as a concern is the recent news that gestures as such might be patentable. The basic human gestures could be made propreitary but that opens doors to newer ways of interaction. Nonetheless, the future of interactive technolgoies for mobile devices is set to undergo a sea change.

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