Minority Report: expect commercial spatial interfaces in 3 years
Oblong Industries, led by Chief Scientist John Underkoffler (the guy who advised the filmmakers behind Steve Spielberg’s 2002 film Minority Report) have unveiled a Spatial Operating Environment (SOE) called Mezzanine. Think of it as the first commercially viable step towards the gesture controlled interface made famous by Tom Cruise in the movie.
Oblong have been working on a system called g-speak for some time, which is their ultimate long-term goal – see the overview:
The drawback with g-speak is that the technology is too expensive to make it commercially viable for large scale adoption. Mezzanine is their answer to this, a simpler, less expensive version that uses every day technologies such as laptops, iOS devices, LCD displays and a Wii-mote like wand.
“Mezzanine is a spatial operating environment meant to be used in conference rooms and other large meeting areas. The peripherals vary, but the system I used consisted of three large screens front and center, two vertically-aligned screen on a wall to the right, a whiteboard to the wall on the left, and two cameras (one in front pointing at you, and one to the side pointing at the whiteboard). The main points of interaction are two “wands”… And the system works in concert with any device — meaning laptop, iPhone, iPad, etc — that is in the room and connected to the network as well.” (TechCrunch 2011)
You can see a demo of the current wand controlled Mezzanine system here:
“Okay, Mezzanine is spectacular, but when are we going to see this stuff in our homes? “We believe the same experience we enable in the work place should be available in your living rooms,” Kramer says. “All of us who read TechCrunch have a reasonably large amount of screens we use, so we need to get there,” he continues. At the same time, “we’re not nearly finished,” Underkoffler adds. “It’s fair to say it will be about three years until this is fully into consumer electronics devices,” he continues, noting that the biggest inhibitor is simply cost and bringing it down to a reasonable level for consumers.” (TechCrunch 2011)
I’m looking forward to the day when Oblong manage to bring Minority Report to the majority.