Alan Levine

Thinking tools are typically designed for students working on their own computers. When used from the front of a classroom, the complex graphical user interfaces of these tools can interfere with an instructor’s ability to lecture effectively and to use natural gestures. A thinking tool for the grade 9 mathematics topic of “relationships” has been developed with a more gesture-friendly interface. This gesture-friendly interface allows a teacher to focus more on interacting with students, creating engaging visualizations, and using natural hand and arm gestures as part of the lecture. - Alan Levine

A London-based SME uses computer vision and other sensing to create multi-touch walls and countertops for use across sectors such as retail, hospitality, education and healthcare. The company is seeking industrial/academic research partners to develop a "gesture language" for human-computer interface. - Alan Levine

Students at the MIT Media Lab have developed a wearable computing system that turns any surface into an interactive display screen. The wearer can summon virtual gadgets and internet data at will, then dispel them like smoke when they’re done. - Alan Levine

'SixthSense' is a wearable gestural interface that augments the physical world around us with digital information and lets us use natural hand gestures to interact with that information. - Alan Levine

Cell phones, game controllers, laptop computers, mobile robots, even electric vehicles capable of re-charging themselves without ever being plugged in. Flat screen TV’s and digital picture frames that hang on the wall—without requiring a wire and plug for power. Industrial systems and medical devices made more reliable by eliminating trouble prone wiring and replaceable batteries. WiTricity Corp. is working to make this future a reality, developing wireless electricity technology that will operate safely and efficiently over distances ranging from centimeters to several meters—and will deliver power ranging from milliwatts to kilowatts. WiTricity Corp.’s vision is to develop a family of wireless electric power components that will enable OEM’s in a broad range of industries and applications to make their products truly “wireless.” Wireless electric power that is safe for people and animals. Wireless electric power—imagine no more… it’s here! - Alan Levine

90% of deaf children are born to hearing parents. Most do not know sign language or have low levels of proficiency. Unlike hearing children of English-speaking parents or deaf children of signing parents, these children often lack the serendipitous access to language at home which is necessary in developing linguistic skills during the "critical period" of language development. Often these children's only exposure to language is from signing at school. Castle Quest and CopyCat are games that use our sign language recognition system to augment early classroom teaching for developing American Sign Language (ASL) skills in young deaf children. - Alan Levine

Joe Fletcher works in the Surface team, and is focused on identifying design approaches which best utilize touch-based interfaces for both Surface as well as Windows 7. In this episode we will discuss with Joe some of the concepts that he will be expanding upon in his upcoming session at MIX09. If you have specific issues you’d like to see him cover in his session, please leave a comment here letting him know! - Alan Levine

Gesture recognition is becoming a more common interaction tool in the fields of ubiquitous and wearable computing. Designing a system to perform gesture recognition, however, can be a cumbersome task. Hidden Markov models (HMMs), a pattern recognition technique commonly used in speech recognition, can be used for recognizing certain classes of gestures. Existing HMM toolkits for speech recognition can be adapted to perform gesture recognition, but doing so requires significant knowledge of the speech recognition literature and its relation to gesture recognition. Thus, we introduce the Georgia Tech Gesture Toolkit (GT2k), which leverages Cambridge University's speech recognition toolkit, HTK, to provide tools that support gesture recognition research. GT2k provides capabilities for training models and allows for both real-time and off-line recognition. - Alan Levine

Setting the international standard for interoperable wireless charging - Alan Levine

Soljačić started searching for ways to transmit power wirelessly. Instead of pursuing a long-distance scheme like Tesla's, he decided to look for midrange power transmission methods that could charge--or even power--portabl­e devices such as cell phones, PDAs, and laptops. He considered using radio waves, which effectively send information through the air, but found that most of their energy would be lost in space. More-targeted methods like lasers require a clear line of sight--and could have harmful effects on anything in their way. So Soljačić sought a method that was both efficient--able to directly power receivers without dissipating energy to the surrounding­s--and safe. He eventually landed on the phenome­non of resonant coupling, in which two objects tuned to the same frequency exchange energy strongly but interact only weakly with other objects. - Alan Levine

The enterprise notebook space is much more interesting now that Dell has announced the Latitude Z. The Z is a 16-inch ultra-thin “preppy” notebook with some firsts for the the industry. Dell has outfitted the Latitude Z with the first wireless charging option for a notebook. That’s not all though, they’ve also made an option for wireless docking in an attempt to leave the Z totally untethered in the office. - Alan Levine

Earlier this week, people in Mexico and the US recognized Dia De Muertos (Day of the Dead), a holiday which recognizes friends and loved ones which have recently departed. So this week we have decided to recognize some technologies which have recently or will soon be leaving the technology mainstream. Unlike other recent lists, this was fairly easy to construct and there was limited, if occasionally spirited (no pun intended), debate about its order. - Alan Levine

At the recent Intel Developer Forum (IDF), I demonstrated a technology developed at our research lab in Seattle that relies on strongly coupled resonators to wirelessly transmit power for several feet with great efficiency. In the month since IDF, the feedback on wireless power transmission has been extraordinary. Clearly the prospect of cutting cords seems to resonate with people everywhere. Someone (not Intel!) has already created a Wikipedia entry for it. - Alan Levine

Eric Giler wants to untangle our wired lives with cable-free electric power. Here, he covers what this sci-fi tech offers, and demos MIT's breakthrough version, WiTricity -- a near-to-market invention that may soon recharge your cell phone, car, pacemaker. - Alan Levine

The hype cycle around wireless power has been gathering a charge ever since Intel wowed folks at its IDF conference last year with a demo of wireless charging. Then over the summer, a TED video surfaced with a similar demo, starring the CEO of WiTricity. And this week we saw Dell launch a notebook with wireless charging and Nokia join a new industry consortium dedicated to wireless power. But like other aspects of the wireless world, there are a lot of differences, issues and things that average outlet-avoiding consumer needs to know - Alan Levine

A system that can deliver power to devices without the need for wires has been shown off at a hi-tech conference. The technique exploits simple physics and can be used to charge a range of electronic devices over many metres. Eric Giler, chief executive of US firm Witricity, showed mobile phones and televisions charging wirelessly at the TED Global conference in Oxford. He said the system could replace the miles of expensive power cables and billions of disposable batteries. - Alan Levine