When developers first fire up the Leap Motion SDK, their first instinct is often to think about how their device can be used in the place of a mouse or touchscreen. But as we’ve learned through user testing, mapping legacy interactions like mouse clicks or touchscreen taps to air pokes often results in unhappy users. Unlike a mouse or touchscreen, the Leap Motion Controller doesn’t provide tactile feedback or a neutral resting position, so this interaction can feel unsatisfying.
Digital technologies in the operating room can be powerful tools for surgeons, but only as long as they can be controlled without compromising sterile procedures. In the last of our AXLR8R spotlight videos, DriftCoast co-founder Hua (Michael) Chen talks about how he was inspired to use Leap Motion technology to open up new interactive possibilities within the OR.
Their project, MACSAir, is a touchless control system for a cardiac catheter – a tiny tube that can be maneuvered inside blood vessels to treat arrhythmia and other life-threatening conditions. With MACSAir, surgeons will be able to watch and control the catheter in real-time using magnetic resonance images (MRI) without needing to leave the operating room.
Stereoscopic imaging is based on a simple idea. By presenting your eyes with two separate screens, you can create the illusion of 3D space. After all, this is how our eyes work – two inputs combined in our brains to create a representation of the world.
But what if you couldn’t see in three dimensions? You might think that using a 3D virtual reality platform wouldn’t make a lot of sense. However, objects in virtual reality don’t have to follow the same rules as objects in real life. That opens up some exciting possibilities, and we’re still just scratching the surface.
James Blaha has spent a lot of time thinking about how we see. As someone with strabismus, or “cross-eye,” his brain ignores the input from his non-dominant eye. It’s a problem that affects millions of people around the world. But by creating a game that forced his eyes to work together, he’s been working to overcome his condition and retrain his brain with the power of gamification.
While truly smart digital assistants are still on the horizon, recent advances in voice recognition and control technologies are taking us closer to sci-fi dreams like Iron Man’s AI JARVIS or Her’s Samantha. At the LEAP.AXLR8R, Peridot Technologies is tackling the challenge of fitting a digital assistant into our everyday lives with voice control and Leap Motion technology.
It’s 2 pm on a Thursday. Twelve of us have sprung free from the Leap Motion bunker for the afternoon, weaving toward the Transamerica Building from SOMA, cutting past basement karaoke bars and barrels of green spiked jackfruits and proud Horses of the Zodiac to Jack Kerouac Alley – the narrow, muraled passageway where Chinatown gives way to North Beach.
But we’re not here to eat dim sum or peruse the shelves of City Lights. We’re here to solve puzzles.
Last weekend’s Brainihack coding bender whet our appetites for what’s possible in the landscape of Neurotechnology, sending our imaginations into the far reaches of dystopian fantasies wherein objects (or people) can be levitated, then summoned, in the course of a single thought. This week, we had the opportunity to dig even deeper into next generation EEG headsets, virtual and augmented reality experiences, and immersive haptic feedback at the NeuroGaming Conference and Expo held in the heart of Downtown San Francisco.
Our CTO and co-founder David Holz joined innovators from Emotiv, Dreamworks Animation, and Immersion Corporation Wednesday morning to discuss how neurosensing, gesture, voice control, and haptic technologies are taking the games industry by storm. The meat of the panel, however, was the future.
For years, Crispy Driven Pixels’ Anastasiy has seen artists and creative people struggle with complicated software interfaces, where dense menus and options can make it hard to translate physical talent to digital landscapes. While his PhotoShop plugin Ethereal is already available in the Airspace Store, he envisions taking motion control and art to a whole new level with a simple, easy-to-use interface that lets you create almost anything you can imagine with just your hands in the air.
User testing and feedback is an important ingredient in any development process, and Anastasiy is working with artists to find new ways to create art with motion control. Beyond that, he wants the platform to be something that anyone could use. Have you ever felt frustrated with current art interfaces? What sorts of features would you want in a motion-controlled interface?
For a lot of kids, STEM subjects (science, technology, engineering, and math) can seem distant and inaccessible. This weekend, Nickelodeon and the city of Burbank kicked off Game+Hack – a three-day hackathon where students, teachers, and novices joined developers, designers, and various representatives from the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in La Cañada Flintridge to play with the latest gadgets and build creative mobile apps.
