SixthSense

Hi readers. I would like to present to you SixthSense, made by Pranav Mistry and his team at the Fluid Interfaces Group at the MIT Media Lab. SixthSense is a wearable device that allows the user to interact with digital information that is overlaid onto the real world. The user interacts using natural hand gestures. This in effect is a form of augmented reality.

The SixthSense prototype consists of a pocket projector, a mirror and a camera. All this are arranged in a pendant-like mobile wearable device and are connected to a mobile computing device in the user's pocket. The projector will display various kinds of digital information onto almost any available surface, like a wall, a piece of paper, or even on your hand. These surfaces can be used as interfaces. The camera meanwhile, tracks the user's hand gestures and the objects in the surroundings. The system tracks our hand gestures with the aid of coloured markers placed on the tips of user's fingers. Multi-touch and multi-user interaction can also occur as the system can track any number of unique coloured markers.

There are many useful and fun applications to this system. The system allows users to carry a computer with them but with the digital information projected into the real world and not confined by a screen. For example, the user can ask the system to project a map onto any surface and the map can be manipulated by hand gestures. To zoom in, simply point two fingers to the map and increase the distances between the fingers. Hand gestures can also be interpreted as instructions. For instance, drawing a circle on your wrist will project an analog watch. Users can also take pictures using the 'framing' gesture and the photos can be viewed on any available surface. The system can also present more information about an object by projecting the information on the object itself. For example, a newspaper can show live news video connected to the news piece the viewer is reading.

By the way, Pranav Mistry says on his website that the prototype can be put together for only USD 350. He evens plans to make the system open-sourced and will post instructions showing us regular people how to build our own prototype soon!

To be honest, all these words do not do justice to this jaw-dropping technology. So, here are two videos of Pranav Mistry and Pattie Maes (Mistry's boss) demonstrating the technology:

Story source: http://www.pranavmistry.com/projects/sixthsense/