Do you think it would be useful to ditch the mouse and interact with your computer by making gestures with your hands? Many researchers have taken on this task, with varying degrees of success and with varying amounts of hardware. Recently researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) have developed a gesture based system using just the webcam found on many computers and laptops, and a multicolored Lycra glove.
Wang and Popović’s system, by contrast, can translate gestures made with a gloved hand into the corresponding gestures of a 3-D model of the hand on screen, with almost no lag time. “This actually gets the 3-D configuration of your hand and your fingers,” Wang says. “We get how your fingers are flexing.”
