(iTers News) - What’s trending out as a ‘Next Big Thing’ in the IT industry is a series of breathtaking revolutions in the UI, or user interface technology –the way that people interact with a machine.
Several years after a multi-finger touch screen technology made its way into Apple iPhone and iPad and then an Ultrabook in 2012, a new breed of breakthrough natural UI technologies are revolutionizing the way people interface with smart phones, tablets, notebook PCs, TVs and even car, enabling them to control those devices with a command of voice and a swipe of fingers.
As more and more devices are now getting smarter and smarter, running on a CPU and OS platform, gesture-control and voice-and facial-recognition technologies will likely become a mainstream UI technology.
Human body recognition in 3D Skeleton
Coming complete with a 3D image signal processor, two CMOS image sensor chips, and a super-fast USB3.0 controller, the platform captures human gesture in a 3 dimension, process them and allows users to remotely control and move any on-screen objects on a display screen with a simple gesture of fingers.
For example, users can play a 3D game of lots of actions on a big screen TV just using both of their hands as if they toy with a remote game controller.
“With a 2D (dimension chip), you can’t do it as good as I am now doing,” said Dr. Nicky C.C. Lu, CEO with Etron Technology.
During an interview with iTers News, he demonstrated how well and fluidly he can remotely activate and play a Ninja game on a wide screen TV just only with both of his hands (see Video clips).
Unlike other IR and laser-based gesture-recognition-technologies that use IR and laser light source to send signals to users and reflect human gesture, it can provide a real-time replica of human actions with no signal latency. The IR or laser gesture-recognition technologies are very vulnerable to surrounding user environments like ambient lights.
“As long as the system is built a glass, or display first and second is smart with a CPU inside, our system can be put in. These two lenses monitor my hand behavior In the future, in a notebook and in the small screen tablet I don’t need to only depend on touch panels, but I can do that remotely control the panel. You can play all kinds of games in Apple and Samsung devices remotely in a distance,” emphasized Dr. Lu.
The Cougar platform is compatible with both of Intel’s X86 architecture and ARM core-based CPUs.
Compatible with X86 and ARM
Applications are huge. The platform can be used with a wide array of smart devices from a smart phone to a tablet to a game console to a notebook PC to a smart TV to a smart car.
As it simply incorporates firmware and three chips on a tiny circuit board, its form factor is so slim that it can well befit into a narrow bezel of a notebook PC. Low BOM, or bill of materials costs are another advantage. It consumes less power, too.
The heart of the platform is Entron’s 3D image signal processor chip that convert human body action image taken in a 3D into a digital signal stream of 0s and 1s of and process them. As the chip can process human body action in the rich depth and width of a 3D image, it can perfectly mirror human gesture with no latency.
Dr. Lu showed how two CMOS image sensors on the platform capture human body and the platform mirror them in a real 3D skeleton, moving forward his arm image in front of his body image.
“You see that my body twist and skeleton is moving The reason that we show this form (skeleton) is to give engineers an experience of how my technology 3D image signal processor can capture human body even in a 3D skeleton,” Dr. Lu added.
True enough, the Cougar platform is so powerful that it can enable gesture/skeleton control and 3D-video/image capture and works with various middleware and application software.
Since the data size of captured images is too large to be managed by motherboard CPUs, Etron developed this platform for intensive data computation immediately post-sensing with a hardware-based depth-map engine. It also provides synchronized dual HD video/image capture through a USB3.0 (uncompressed) or USB2.0 (compressed) interface.
Etron’s Cougar Platform supports both short-distance (0.5 - 1.5 m) recognition, such as gesture control, and long-distance (1.5 – 4 m) recognition, such as skeleton control. It realizes full-range recognition by mapping different sensor/lens resolutions with various base lines (i.e., the distance between two sensors).
This breakthrough technology thus enables system developers and manufacturers to build a wide range of next-generation applications in smartphones, tablets, game consoles, personal computers, notebooks, TVs, and other emerging settings.
By integrating IC design, software, hardware, and firmware expertise, Etron’s Cougar Platform empowers today’s hottest motion-sensing application developers and manufacturers to quickly incorporate gesture/skeleton control and 3D-video/image capture functionality into their newest and most exciting applications. The Cougar Platform SDK (System Development Kit) for middleware, application software, system, and solution developers will be available.
Photos & Videos by JH Bae
