What does the future look like? Maybe it's my love of science fiction or just a side-effect of spending my days surrounded by technology, but this is a question that occupies my mind quite frequently, in one form or another. And perhaps the best part of my job is that I sometimes get a glimpse at a new technology that answers that question. The answer today is the Leap Motion Controller, a compact PC peripheral that brings motion-sensing technology and gesture-based interaction to any laptop or desktop with a USB port. This little piece of tomorrow is available for Windows and Mac systems alike, and at about $80 each, anyone can afford to be an early adopter.
There's little wonder that 3D gesture-based interfaces are coming; similar concepts have popped up in films such as Minority Report and the Iron Man movies. It also makes sense in the logical progression of user interfaces; abstract text-based UI (using only a keyboard) gave way to 2D display-only graphical UIs (with the addition of the mouse), which have evolved into 2D touch-based UIs (with capacitive touch screens), which have themselves developed from basic tap-to-click to multitouch displays with gesture support. In the past, we've seen plenty of attempts to move interface technology forward. Plenty of PCs offer rudimentary hand-wave support with webcam-based gesture controls. We've seen air mice, like the Gyration Air Mouse Elite, or the glove-based ION Wireless Air Mouse.
The next steps include non-touch gestures, which have already gotten some development with webcam-based gesture controls. Gaming has pushed this sort of interaction forward considerably with the Sony PlayStation Move and Razer Hydra, but perhaps the most prominent application of this sort of motion-sensing tech is the Microsoft Kinect for Xbox 360.
The Leap Motion Controller is the next step in this evolution, letting you interact by gesturing in the air in front of the PC. Whether or not it will catch on is still up in the air, but given the interest shown in the Leap Motion Controller, including deals to embed the device technology into coming HP and Asus PCs as early as this year, the Leap Motion Controller is an early glimpse of what the future will hold.
The Controller
The Leap Motion Controller is a tiny thing, measuring only a half-inch thick and not much bigger than a pack of gum—0.5 by 3 by 1.2 inches (HWD). The device has an Apple-inflected minimalist design, with bare metal around the outside edge, a rubber sheet on the bottom for stable non-sliding grip, and a glossy piece of tinted glass on the top.
The Leap Motion Controller connects via USB 3.0 (but it's USB 2.0 compatible as well), with both 24- and 60-inch connector cables bundled with the device. Inside the device, you can faintly see three glowing red spots, the infrared LED illuminators that let the sensors inside "see" your hands and gestures, with a 150-degree field of view and eight cubic feet (two feet wide by two feet long by two feet high) of interactive space to gesture within. Because the size of the interactive space is determined by the controller, and not tied to the dimensions of the display the way touchscreens are, the small controller can be used with any size display, from an 11-inch netbook to a 60-inch HDTV used as a monitor.
The Leap Motion Controller doesn't actually do any real processing within the device; instead, it shifts all of that to the PC, relaying data directly from the sensors to the software. When using the Leap Motion Controller, there is only the tiniest discrepancy between action and response, but it's so slight as to be nearly lag-free.
Activation
Activating the Leap Motion Controller is a bit more complicated than plugging in a mouse, requiring a software download and install. Go to the setup page (www.LeapMotion.com/setup), select the appropriate operating system (Windows or Mac), and then begin downloading. An installation wizard will walk you through the rest of the setup.
You'll then need to create an account in Airspace, Leap Motion's software environment for the controller and associated software. It just takes an email and a password, and you'll be in business.
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