Dinesh C. Sharma, Cambridge, Massachusetts, February 23, 2009
Mail Today
Pranav Mistry is no ordinary geek. He can just wave his fingers in air to draw a figure on any surface just as you use a computer mouse and a screen to do so. He can simply frame a scene with his hands, snap its picture and project it anywhere he likes.
Not only that, he can also check his email on his palm, draw a watch on his wrist to check the time and use his palm as keypad of his mobile phone.
This is no science fiction or virtual reality. You may call it ‘ mad science’ but Pranav calls it the ‘ Sixth Sense’, a sensational invention that is creating waves in the world of high technology in North America these days.
Pranav, an alumnus of the Indian Institute of Technology, Mumbai, is currently pursuing a doctorate in fluid interfaces at the famed Media Lab of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology here.
He has created a gadget using available hardware — a webcam, a small projector and a laptop — and highly complex software, which allows you to do away with keyboard and mouse, and a screen to connect and communicate with the digital world.
The real power of the device comes from the machine vision and the complex algorithms that Pranav has written.
The combination is a wearable machine that can empower you to use your fingers to access data and use any surface to project it.
“ I got this idea while I was visiting my parents in India last summer. So far, virtual reality and augmented reality has happened only in laboratories. I wanted to make a real consumer product which people can use,” Pranav said. “ So, I thought of this crazy idea of putting a projector on my head and using a webcam as a digital eye to capture information.
The digital eye understands what my hand is doing, whether I am gesturing or holding a product or a piece of paper. Once it understands what I am doing, it can send the information to my laptop or any computing device in my backpack and the information can then be projected on any surface through a projector,” he added.
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