Hands-On With The MIT Media Lab's G-Speak Interface

http://player.ooyala.com/player.swf?embedCode=hueWlyMTp4Vc7UDvs8urh8tcbjLVcqwm&version=2

This interface has been talked about extensively before here and elsewhere, but it bears another look. It’s amazingly cool. Basically what you’re seeing is a gestural interface powered by a pair of gloves. It supports multiple hands – multiple pairs of hands, that is, so you and your friends can freak out – and it is so smooth and intuitive that it borders on magic.

The two demos here, Grabby and Erf, show only a few of the basic gestures and with a little imagination you can see where this sort of thing is headed. I doubt we’ll be waggling our hands in front of our laptops anytime soon (even though we’ll be waggling our hands in front of the the PS3 and XBox’s Kinetic this Christmas) but the demo is so futuristic that it’s scary.

The system uses cameras to sense the hands in space and monitor movement in 3D. The gloves are just standard black gloves with little reflectors sewn on. The effect is amazing.