Hard to believe, but the remote is actually over 50 years old. During this time, it has become an integral part of every living room. Over the years however, more and more devices such as receivers, stereo systems and DVD players have been added. Soon one did not know where to go with all the control devices. At the latest, when there are even more controllable devices in the course of the home network, the concept remote control reaches its limits.
A handy thing
No one seriously wants to use heating, roller shutters, light, windows, doors or household appliances. Therefore, in the case of complete installations, LCD wall panels or operating tablets are used. Thanks to the triumph of the smartphone and the principle App, more and more devices can be operated by mobile phone. But the smartphone is also used as a remote control. Therefore, it is likely that this is only an interim solution. But what comes next?
Playing
Gesture control allows people to finally be creative again.
A leap forward
Michael Buckwald, co-founder and CEO of Leap Motion
Words are used
In recent years, two alternative types of control become more and more sociable: the use of gestures and voice input. The 2002 science fiction "Minority Report" showed for the first time in a comprehensible way how gestures could be used to control a computer. In the film you can see Tom Cruise using a terminal equipped with a sensor-filled glove. Erdacht had the then astonishing future vision of the scientists John Underkoffler.
Three years later, Nintendo made Wii with the Wii game console, and especially with its Wiimote control unit. However, this is not "real" motion tracking. Indeed, the movement is measured by an acceleration sensor in the controller. Complex movement sequences or hand gestures can not be detected. Nevertheless, remote controls with such accelerometers are becoming more and more popular as "3D mice", eg to control the Smart TV.
Making the body the controller first managed the Kinect control of the Microsoft game console Xbox 360. It recognizes the entire body of the controller and responds to its movements. In addition to the variant for Xbox games, Microsoft also offers a Kinect for Windows desktops that is largely identical to the console version. You can also use the PC, laptop and tablet.
These language commands are the Xbox One
The Kinect camera is already very mature, especially in the latest generation of consoles. In doing so, motion sensors and microphones work together by capturing the speaking user so that the camera can be aligned with him and additionally his / her lip movements are read to minimize misunderstanding.
The Kinect, however, has decisive disadvantages: it is relatively large and requires a certain distance for the operation. This may work on the Smart TV, it's rather impractical on the laptop.
The gesture control of Leap Motion is much more compact. Not much bigger than a matchbox, the sensor can be connected to the computer via USB. Finger and hand gestures are then detected in a region above the sensor. With a little practice you can write with a finger or how on a touch screen things enlarge and reduce. Leap offers in its own app-shop several programs, with which one can control eg Google Earth or Windows 8. Leap has partnered with HP and Asus to leverage their laptops and keyboards from the factory with an integrated Leap Motion Controller. An integration into smartphones and tablets is also being worked on.
And smart home applications are also being planned, as Michael Buckwald, one of Leap's founders, told us: "Already there are a lot of people who connect Leap to a computer and then control their smart home, but ultimately It is our goal that Leap can also be used to operate a home automation system directly. "
Other developers are also working on the control of computers. This is how Intel wants to offer this year in its computers 3D cameras, with which contactless control is possible. The technology for this comes from the Belgian company SoftKinetic. It also offers cameras with which you can operate TV, as well as gesture recording in vehicles. The separately sold camera of the PlayStation 4 also works with SoftKinetic technology
View through the glasses
The start-up company Thalmic with the Myo bracelet goes a completely different way. The tape is strapped around the forearm and then not only measures its movements with accelerometers, but also the muscles that trigger finger movements with sensors.
The voice control is an even older future vision. Even in the space ship Enterprise, Mr. Spock and Co. could verbally give commands to their computers. The science fiction series was broadcast in the USA in 1966 and in the United States in 1972. Until this vision became a reality, however, a lot of time went by.
In fact, research on speech recognition began in the 1960s. But for a long time the researchers were faced with apparently insuperable technical hurdles, so that a maximum of a few dozen single words could be recognized.
In ten to twenty years, speech control will be normal.
Reimund Schmald, Marketing Manager at Mobile Devision at Nuance Communications
It was only in the eighties that the breakthrough came when IBM introduced a system that could recognize 5,000 words. Seven years later, IBM presented a program at CeBIT that was able to identify between 20,000 and 30,000 words: IBM's ViaVoice became market-ready in 1997. At the same time, Nuance's first competitor appeared with Nuance's Dragon NaturallySpeaking. While ViaVoice quickly disappeared, Nuance became one of the world's largest providers of voice recognition and voice control software.
Nuance's Dragon TV platform provides the ability to control TVs. This works, for example, with the "Magic Remote" from Cinema 3D Smart TVs from LG. Also Entertain, TV TV streaming offer of the Telekom can be operated with Dragon TV: via the free available Entertain Remote Control App for Apple and Android. The fact that the rest of the apartment will soon follow is the case for Reimund Schmald, Marketing Manager at Mobile Devision at Nuance Communications, "We are already living in the living room, then we are in the kitchen in ten years."
LG 42LA8609 with Magic Remote in test
Schmald sees the future in the synthesis of language and gestures: "If you combine both, you could improve the speech recognition." I think both will end up in the end. "
A very special product has already caused many headlines: Google Glass. The intelligent data glasses, which project images directly into the eye, were both celebrated as innovation and as a privacy killer demonized. In fact, the device opens up completely new possibilities. The keyword is "Augmented Reality": Here, virtual elements are placed over an image of the reality with which one can then interact.
However, if you could handle your hands with Google Glass, it would be possible to interact with the virtual objects as much as with things in the real world. The Crowdfunding project Meta 1 shows how such a thing could look like. A Moverio 3D glasses from Epson were combined with a 3D tracking camera from SoftKinetic.
A different vision of the future is pursued at Nuance. "I think in ten to twenty years, we'll have small home robots running around our home. You'll say 'Get me a bottle of beer!' Then he runs and gets you something ", prophesies Reimund Schmald. The Nao robots from Aldebaran show with software from Nuance how something can look like. But they can not get beer yet.
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