Video: Kinect at the Supermarket - Supporting "Sales Conversations" Using Pointing Gestures - a prototype

Supporting Sales Conversation Using Pointing Gestures via Johannes Schoening:


Innovative Retail Lab in cooperation with Bizerba

Multi-modal Interactive Maps for People with Visual Impairments: Featuring a Stantum multitouch screen with a tactile layer.

To learn more about this project, take a look at the video and related publications below. This is a great example of a team that is harnessing emerging technologies to improve the lives of people with disabilities.


Video: "Multimodal Maps for Blind People"


Website


Publications
Anke Brock, Philippe Truillet, Bernard Oriola, Christophe Jouffrai (IRIT CNRS and Universite de Toulouse) Usage of Multimodal Maps for Blind People: Why and How
ITS’10, November 7–10, 2010, Saarbrücken, Germany
Paper: http://www.irit.fr/~Philippe.Truillet/projects/doc/MultimodalMapsForTheBlind-ITS10.pdf
Poster: http://www.irit.fr/~Philippe.Truillet/projects/doc/Poster-ITS10.pdf

Stantum (Multi-touch screen used for the application.)
Ivy Middleware (Used in this application.)

Cross-posted on the TechPsych blog.

Xbox Kinect Interactive Puppet Prototype, from Theo Watson and Emily Gobeille (design.io) & Update on Funky Forest

I came across the following video on a post on the  Creative Applications blog about the Theo Watson and Emily Gobeille's  recent work with OpenFrameworks, Kinect, and an interactive puppet prototoype:

Interactive Puppet Prototype with Xbox Kinect from Theo Watson on Vimeo.

I'm not surprised that Theo Watson and Emily (design.io) decided to experiment with the XBox Kinect. I can't wait to see what they will create for Kinect in the future, based on their previous work --   A couple of years ago I wrote a post about their enchanting interactive installation, "Funky Forest":  OpenFrameworks & Interactive Multimedia:  Funky Forest Installation for CinKid. 


You can see from the video of their Funky Forest installation (2007 CinKid) that they create engaging interactive applications:

Funky Forest - Interactive Ecosystem from Theo Watson on Vimeo.
(Information from Theo Watson's Vimeo site)
"Funky Forest is a wild and crazy ecosystem where children manage the resources to influence the environment around them. By using their bodies or pillow "rocks" and "logs", water flowing from the digital stream on the floor can be dammed and diverted to the forest to make different parts grow. If a tree does not receive enough water it withers away but by pressing their bodies into the forest children create new trees based on their shape and character. As children explore and play they discover that the environment is inhabited by a variety of sonic life forms and creatures who appear and disappear depending on the health of the forest. As the seasons change the creatures also go through a metamorphosis."
Credits:
Theodore Watson
Emily Gobeille
Project Page:
muonics.net/​site_docs/​work.php?id=41
zanyparade.com/​v8/​projects.php?id=12


Note:  A version of Funky Forest, Moomah Edition, is permanently installed in New York City at the Moomah Children's Cafe. This version includes interactive environments related to the four seasons of the year, including an interactive particle system with falling leaves and snow.


FOR THE TECH-CURIOUS
Libfreenect for OX, by Theodore Watson

XBox Kinect running on OS X ( with source code ) from Theo Watson on Vimeo.
The following information and links were taken from the Vimeo description of the above video:  
"This is a port/adaptation of Hector Martin's libfreenect for OS X made by Theodore Watson.
Hector Martin's Libfreenect project page is here:  git.marcansoft.com/​?p=libfreenect.git
Most of the code is unchanged but there are some changes to libusb which was needed to get it running (and a few extra libusb commands) as well as some tweaking of the transfer sizes.
It should be self contained and you shouldn't need to install libusb (the app links it directly ).
Grab the Source Code:
UPDATE:
(Tested on OS X 10.6.3 - 32bit now and with fixes)
theo.tw/​deliver/​kinect/​001-libfreenect-modded-osx-updated.zip
ofxKinect for OF users - thanks Dan!
openframeworks.cc/​forum/​viewtopic.php?p=24948#p24948
Tips:
- Try both usb ports.
- Try not to have too many other devices plugged in (or any)."


(Check the Vimeo website to see if there are updates)


OpenFrameworks Forum
http://www.openframeworks.cc/forum/


RELATED
Presentation about Funky Forest  (ThisHappened)

Emily Gobeille & Theo Watson talk about Funky Forest from This happened – Utrecht on Vimeo.


Cross-posted on the TechPsych blog.

Android Tablet Prototype Runs Flash (Video and quick links)

It is interesting to watch how this unfolds:

Part I

Part II


The above videos can be found on ZedoMAX's YouTube channel.
(Thanks to Justin Ireland for the link.)

RELATED
More videos about Adobe products and new forms of tablets can be found on TheFlashBlog. (Thanks to Christian Moore for the link.)

YouTube HTML 5 Video Player Info
Google Chrome 5 Beta: The Top Five Features 
Ian Paul, PC World Blog, 5/5/10
"HTML 5, the new programming standard for Web pages, may not be officially ready yet, but that hasn't stopped Google from implementing some of its new and exciting features. Google Chrome 5 beta introduces file drag-and-drop capabilities, Geolocation (such as Google's MyLocation feature), and offline application caching (Google Gears replacement ). The new version of Chrome beta also offers Web sockets, which make it easier and faster for Web-based applications to communicate with their host servers." -Ian Paul

Giving Healthcare a Digital "Touch" via Microsoft

According to the PR release from Microsoft, Texas Health Resources and Microsoft partner Infusion Development have developed a prototype to assist with doctor-patient communication and collaboration:

Medhost has created an emergency department dashboard that can assist medical professionals decision-making process more efficiently:





Vectorform developed an application to assist children in rehabilitation at the Cook Children's Health System in Fort Worth, Texas. The application allows the rehabilitation specialist design their own evaluations for patients:



The only drawback is that the Surface has a very high price tag. I think I'll stick with HP TouchSmart PC projects with my students!

Pattie Maes TED Talk: Sixth Sense - Mobile Wearable Interface and Gesture Interaction (for the price of a cell phone?!)

In the following video, Pattie Maes and Pranav Mistry,of MIT's Fluid Interfaces Group, demonstrate SixthSense, wearable technology that incorporates a video camera, a projector, a digital camera:


From the SixthSense website:

"The SixthSense prototype is comprised of a pocket projector, a mirror and a camera. The hardware components are coupled in a pendant like mobile wearable device. Both the projector and the camera are connected to the mobile computing device in the user’s pocket. The projector projects visual information enabling surfaces, walls and physical objects around us to be used as interfaces; while the camera recognizes and tracks user's hand gestures and physical objects using computer-vision based techniques. The software program processes the video stream data captured by the camera and tracks the locations of the colored markers (visual tracking fiducials) at the tip of the user’s fingers using simple computer-vision techniques. The movements and arrangements of these fiducials are interpreted into gestures that act as interaction instructions for the projected application interfaces. The maximum number of tracked fingers is only constrained by the number of unique fiducials, thus SixthSense also supports multi-touch and multi-user interaction."

Photo from the SixthSense website

Of course it is similar to Minority Report, but I don't consider it to be a problem, because it supports multi-touch and multi-user interaction, and it is a "mobile" application of useful technology.

The interaction that had me at "hello world".

Mozilla's Concept Series: A call for collaborative participation. Demos look like they would work well on a touch screen...

Mozilla labs has a call for participation in the development of nextgen web interaction design. "Be bold. Be radical. The crazier, the better. Let’s explore the future together."
-Mozilla Labs

The following videos give a good overview of the innovations initially created for this new endeavor:

Aurora, created by Adaptive Path, is an adaptive browser interaction concept, incorporating radial and wheel menus, data visualization objects, a 3D navigation system, and more.

Aurora (Part 1) from Adaptive Path on Vimeo.



Bookmarking and History Concept Video from Aza Raskin on Vimeo.



Firefox Mobile Concept Video from Aza Raskin on Vimeo.



Excerpt about this collaborative project, from the Mozilla Labs website:

"Today we’re calling on industry, higher education and people from around the world to get involved and share their ideas and expertise as we collectively explore and design future directions for the Web.

You don’t have to be a software engineer to get involved, and you don’t have to program. Everyone is welcome to participate. We’re particularly interested in engaging with designers who have not typically been involved with open source projects. And we’re biasing towards broad participation, not finished implementations.

We’re hoping to lower the barrier to participation by providing a forum for surfacing, sharing, and collaborating on new ideas and concepts. Our goal is to bring even more people to the table and provoke thought, facilitate discussion, and inspire future design directions for Firefox, the Mozilla project, and the Web as a whole."

-via Putting People First

This will be an interesting trend to follow. I'd like to work on web navigation systems optimized for multi-touch and large screen displays. Is it now possible?