It seems Minority Report-style computer interfaces might arrive a whole lot sooner than we expected: A new USB device, called The Leap, creates an 8-cubic-feet bubble of “interaction space,” which detects your hand gestures down to an accuracy of 0.01 millimeters — about 200 times more accurate than “existing touch-free products and technologies,” such as your smartphone’s touchscreen… or Microsoft Kinect.Before you read any further, watch the video below. It’s really rather awesome — and apparently the video is footage of a real The Leap unit, rather than a computer rendering (you know a device is serious when the The is part of the product name). You will also notice that it doesn’t only detect hand movements and gestures — you can use objects, such as a pen or chopsticks, or, assuming software support, your favorite pet.
Now, having watched the video, you probably have a few questions. First of all, no, we don’t know what hardware is hidden within the The Leap. Leap Motion (the company behind The Leap) has said absolutely nothing about the tech, other than it’s “unlike anything that currently exists on the market or in academia.” Realistically, the device probably uses some kind of infrared LIDAR (radar, but with light) — or perhaps it’s like a high-definition version of Kinect (which only uses a 640×480 camera, meaning it can’t come close to Leap’s 0.01mm accuracy). On the software side, there’s undoubtedly some magic at work, but again we don’t have any details beyond the fact that it uses “a patented mathematical approach.”
Technical details aside, The Leap is available to pre-order now for $70, and is expected to ship early next year. For now, Leap Motion is actually giving away free units and an SDK to developers — though I suspect there’s a limit on how many Leaps are up for grabs. Once the device gets into the hands of developers, we should have a much better idea of how the technology works.
In practice, I have some doubts about the actual usability of Leap. Personally, I don’t want to hold my arm out in front of me for 8+ hours every day — and I really doubt that interacting with Leap is somehow faster or more productive than a mouse and keyboard. If you want gesture control on a PC, or stylus input, get some kind of Wacom tablet or the Apple Magic Trackpad.
While the video is entirely desktop-oriented, perhaps a more compelling use for Leap could be in the mobile space. With 0.01mm accuracy, it would be easy enough to develop a virtual, gesture-based keyboard. On the other hand, for $70 (cheaper than Kinect!), maybe it’s worth having The Leap on your desk just in case you want to do some lean-back surfing, or other things that don’t require you to be hunched over your mouse and keyboard — or the Leap tech could just be built into the keyboard itself. Anyway, holding your arm out for eight hours might be tiring at first, but it would get easier over time. I can just see it now: The humans of the future will all have massive biceps and pecs.
Spark notes: This is fucking cool for 70$
