Hand-Gesture Technologies, Robot arm, CES Tobii Technology

Hand-Gesture Technologies Wave Bye to Desktop Mouse

BY JESSICA E. VASCELLARO A race to liberate computer users from the mouse is kicking into high gear, inspired by the potential of turning hands and other body parts into digital controllers.
The goal: to manage computers and other devices with gestures rather than pointing and clicking a mouse or touching a display directly. Backers believe that the approach can make it not only easier to carry out many existing chores but also take on trickier tasks such as creating 3-D models, verifying whether clothes fit, training athletes and browsing medical imagery during surgery without touching anything.


【CES】用“眼睛”操作Windows 8，Tobii的演示備受關注 　　只需移動視線便可向終端輸入信息的“視線輸入技術”

開發商瑞典Tobii Technology首次亮相CES。該公司的技術已經用於面向殘疾人士的輔助設備和部分產業設備中，其瞄准的下一個應用目標是個人電腦和家電領域…… (詳見全文)

Robot arm runs on brain power

By Clive Cookson

Cathy, who was completely paralysed by a stroke 15 years ago, thought about having a drink of coffee. A robotic arm responded by moving her drinking bottle from a nearby table up to her mouth so she could sip through the straw.

The remarkable experiment in brain technology was the first time since the stroke that 58-year-old Cathy had drunk without help from a carer. “The smile on her face was a remarkable thing to see,” said Leigh Hochberg, a professor of neuro-engineering at Brown University in Rhode Island.
Cathy was one of two tetraplegic patients taking part in a clinical trial of the BrainGate brain-computer interface developed at Brown.
The results, reported in tomorrow’s edition of the journal Nature, describe the most complex functions anyone has performed using a brain-computer interface.
“Years after the onset of paralysis, we found that it was still possible to record brain signals that carry multi-dimensional information about movement and that those signals could be used to move an external device,” Prof Hochberg said.
The researchers say their technology is still several years from practical use. The future lies in developing a fully automated, wireless brain-computer interface.