MyScience.ie

It’s Friday afternoon, so what better than to chill out with the Nintendo Wii. Johnny Chung Lee from Carnegie Mellon University has a great series of videos on YouTube exploring the possibilities that the Wiimote opens up for user interfaces. His research shows that the Minority Report interfaces where Tom Cruise’ character was able to operate a computer through hand gestures in mid air isn’t too far off. Here’s one of his videos below, also be sure to check out his YouTube channel for some other amazing vids.

On a similar note, the Guardian reports on the Royal Institution Christmas Lectures in the UK will feature a talk by Professor Chris Bishop, chief research scientist at Microsoft Research in Cambridge and Professor of Computer Science at the University of Edinburgh. According to the paper, Bishop will highlight that “the way we control and interact with computers is set to change rapidly in the next five years…just like Tom Cruise’s character in the film Minority Report, more of us will be manipulating and combining digital information by gesturing in thin air and flinging our hands over touchscreen devices. He also predicts that 3D displays will replace the traditional flat screen for some applications.”