It is early days for virtual and augmented reality, but those days have been whipped into a frothy frenzy by the omnipresent Google Glass and the much-awaited Oculus Rift. So much so that we will soon see slicker, sleeker, slimmer wearable gear, but also an emerging cottage industry around the technology. Take Augumenta, a Finland software company who this week at Wearable Tech Expo is demonstrating gesture recognition and control of applications that run on augmented reality glasses from ChipSiP and Epson, and Google's heads up display.
Many of these devices require coupling with a smartphone, either a name brand, or a specialized platform, which for now seems logical when you consider the power required to run, say, binocular projection. But those coupled devices also require some dexterity when you're performing particular tasks, like entering a phone number or manipulating something using an image augmented onto a real object -- and I say this from experience. Augumenta projects objects that you can "touch" or manipulate with hand gestures, and uses the camera from the glasses to capture, respond to, and interact with those gestures.
The Augumenta software will understand six hand gestures when it becomes available, according to the compay's CEO, Tero Aaltonen. Those include open palm, thumbs up, thumbs down, the OK sign, a pointing finger, and a fist. No, a fist with a particular extended finger is not in the mix (we knew you'd ask), but Tero said the company has tested around 12 gestures in total.
One of the demonstration games the company will allow attendees to play with is Rock/Paper/Scissors/Lizard/Spock (if those final two options are unfamiliar to you, there's a full explanation courtesy of The Big Bang Theory). The other demonstrations include an augmented reality keypad that shows up in one hand while you type in numbers with the other; and a demonstration of slider controls for dimming a light bulb. You can see these demonstrations in the video embedded above.
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