"The iBIZ Virtual Keyboard costs $99.00 and can be preordered directly though us."
We'll see. Ken paid Enterprise $100/unit. But then, until recently they did have a history of selling their products below cost according to their filings.
In Orlando, FL, WKMG became the first television station to use GestureStorm when it unveiled the system in December. In July 2003, Sony Computer Entertainment released the EyeToy, a PlayStation 2 peripheral that, using special software and an inexpensive digital camera, can project a video feed of a player into a game, even responding to the player's movements; instead of zapping a bad guy with a controller button, the gamer gives him a swift karate chop. This year, two companies will debut virtual keyboards that let people control personal digital assistants and even automotive equipment with gestures. As far as Charles Cohen, vice president for research and development at Cybernet, is concerned, gesture recognition's time has come. "Gesture recognition is remote control with a wave of a hand," he says
The market is big for VKB.....
Ex. Video games....billion dollars industry..
Canesta is working on there version... **************************************************************************
The clouds have parted. The rain has ceased. As I finish my round of GestureStorm theatrics, I decide to shoo away the clouds and let Detroit return to its peace and calm once again.
Over lunch at a nearby Italian restaurant, Cybernet's Cohen suggests that the mission of gesture recognition is not necessarily to supplant the old keyboard and mouse but, rather, to supplement them. "I won't say gesture recognition is the be-all and end-all," he says.
Indeed, one intriguing application illustrates the way that gesture technology could dovetail with conventional interfaces. A device from San Jose, CA-based Canesta—due out later this year—brings gesture recognition to personal digital assistants. The device projects an image of a keyboard onto a flat surface, such as a desk, through a tiny lens inside the PDA. An infrared light beam directed at the zone just above the projected keyboard senses precisely where the user's fingers are at any instant: the device monitors the time it takes for a pulse of infrared light to leave the emitter, bounce off the moving fingertips, and return to a sensor in the PDA. A pulse's round-trip travel time corresponds with a specific distance, providing a 3-D map of the fingertips' position over the keys, so whatever the user types on the virtual keyboard is captured digitally inside the PDA.
The Canesta device operates at more than 50 frames per second, so it can keep up with even the speediest typist. Because Canesta's technology uses infrared light to measure the distance to the object, it could potentially alleviate one of the problems facing Sony and Cybernet: how to perceive gestures against a bright or busy background. With the current configuration of the EyeToy, for example, I'd seriously mess up my daughter's game of Wishi Washi if I passed in front of the camera's background while she's playing. If Canesta's infrared light were trained on her, and her alone, the game wouldn't register my interruption. Canesta considers the $11 billion video game industry to be a future target area and says it has talked with a number of major players in the electronic-entertainment business. Later this year, a Jerusalem, Israel, company called VKB will introduce a competing virtual keyboard that employs technology similar to Canesta's.
Beyond keyboards, weather forecasting, and games, gesture recognition technology could transform the way people interact with computers in a variety of settings. Universities have been working on the technology for years. Researchers at the Georgia Institute of Technology, for example, have explored how gesture recognition may help reduce automobile accidents. A group led by Thad Starner has created what it calls a "gesture panel" in place of a standard dashboard control. The driver adjusts the car's temperature or sound system volume by maneuvering her hand over a designated area, without having to take her eyes off the road.
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