The days of rifling through couch cushions for a television remote could be coming to an end, as 3-D gesture-recognition technology finds its way into set-top boxes following a deal between Intel and Softkinetic-Optrima. Wired.com was given an exclusive sneak peek at the technology in advance the general announcement, which is expected Thursday.

Like a hyperevolved descendant of The Clapper, the devices will let television viewers navigate menus and control volume by moving their arms in a predefined patterns.

Gesture recognition technology — previously somewhat arcane — gathered momentum last year when Microsoft demoed its Project Natal to enormous acclaim. Natal applies similar technology to hard-core gaming on the Xbox, letting users play fighting games by actually punching and kicking in the air, using technology from Microsoft's acquisition of Israel-based gesture-recognition company 3DV.

In addition to a partnership with EA Sports for games, Softkinetic-Optrima plans to apply gesture recognition to the lean-back television experience, allowing people to turn up the volume by moving their hand in a circle, switch the channel by swiping to the right, pause by extending their hands in a "stop" gesture, and so on.

Softkinetic-Optrima's gesture-recognition technology, which links up with cameras with radarlike properties, will be bundled in a box running on top of Intel's powerful Atom Processor CE4100, Wired.com has learned.

That chip will appear in Orange's cable services in Africa, Europe and the Middle East by the end of this year or early next year, and likely in the United States as cable and satellite providers incorporate Intel's chip, which also supports 3-D television. The jury is still out on 3-D TV, but regardless of whether people are willing to don 3-D glasses, Softkinetic-Optrima's gesture-recognition technique might come in handy (so to speak) because it works with regular broadcasts and menus.

"We provide basically the exact same technology, except not being Microsoft, we can adapt it to many other environments, like television and set-top boxes," said Softkinetic-Optrima managing director Michel Tombroff. This soon-to-be-announced Intel deal sets the stage for cable and satellite set-top box manufacturers to bring gesture recognition to the masses. Softkinetic-Optrima also licensed its technology to Raytheon earlier this month, for military applications including soldier training, and the company is in talks with medical device manufacturers as well, to make computers doctors don't have to touch. Competitors, including Israel-based Primesense, are working on similar projects.

"Any place where a system would be controlled by gestures is a candidate for this technology," said Tombroff.

But are we ready to control televisions with movements? And what about the privacy issues associated with pointing a connected camera at your living room, 24 hours a day?

According to Intel, we'll need this technology in part to deal with the fire hose of content streaming through our television sets, which will grow stronger as internet-delivered television becomes commonplace.

"By the year 2015, it's expected there will be billions of consumer devices delivering billions of hours of video content, music, videogames and web browsing, so naturally we'll need much more sophisticated ways to organize and deliver content in interactive and intuitive ways," said Intel marketing manager Mike Tyson in Softkinetic-Optrima's statement.

In other words, once these systems evolve, gestures could prove more effective tools for finding content than our clumsy remotes and menus are today (although TiVo has demonstrated many ways to improve over the interfaces used by most cable providers, which force users to search for the first word in a program's title).

How It Works

The 3-D camera Softkinetic-Optrima uses for these Intel-inside boxes (prototype pictured above) produces a depth map of the distance of each pixel from the camera. These work more like radar than like a traditional two-lens stereoscopic camera (like the one used by Earthmine to make more detailed maps than Google's). That's because stereo cameras need visible light to make a 3-D image, and people often watch television or play videogames in relative darkness. Making matters worse, a purely optical solution can't distinguish between a white shirt and the white wall behind it.

Because you shouldn't have to turn on the light or change shirts just to switch the channel on your television, the current generation of 3-D gesture-recognition cameras shine their own invisible, infrared light against their subjects and judge the distance of each point based either on the time it takes to return (the "time of flight" method") or deformations in a projected grid. Until recently, they were too expensive to be included in consumer devices, so SoftKinetic-Optrima focused on industrial uses, prior to its acquisition of Optrima, which makes the cameras. As tends to happen with technology, the price of gesture-recognition cameras has dropped significantly over time, to the point where set-top box manufacturers can include them in standard cable or satellite boxes.

The company's software analyzes 3-D camera data at 50 frames per second, recognizing gestures and movements or recreating the bodies of one or more people in front of the camera on the television screen, like a lower-resolution version of the cameras-and-dots technique used to capture the movements of athletes for sports videogames. In the case of 3-D programming, it can place your avatar within the scene based on the size of the room, where you're standing in it, your height, and so on, and allow you to grab objects that appear behind other objects.

Privacy Safeguards Apparently in Place, for Now

Today, advertisers and broadcasters pretty much guess at how many viewers they have because televisions don't know when people leave the room, or how many people are plopped on the couch. This technology could answer those questions.

The good news: Softkinetic-Optrima says none of the companies it is talking to have any plans to do so – initially, at least.

Television advertisements in some regions already allow voting and other interaction via remote control, according to Tombroff, "but it's a decision whether they take part in that, by pushing a button. Here, it's different, because you are in front of your TV and you are passive, and you must be able to decide whether or not some other entity is watching you or not. For that reason, since it's a very delicate subject, the default position of all the companies we've talked with in the TV and set-top box companies is to say 'we won't allow that,' at least for now."

Cable companies in the United States operate under strict privacy rules, so if movement and presence data were to be sent upstream, users would have to opt-in to the system, and would have the right to see whatever data is being collected about whether they're in the room, what they're doing, and how many other people are there.

As viewers demand more interactive features, they could open themselves up to the positive sort of remote monitoring in the name of fun or fitness. "We are exploring with [France Telecom's Orange] and others ways to make the television experience richer. Imagine watching a fitness program, and you decide to participate, and you become one of the avatars in the group … or watching a cartoon, and the kid becomes Mickey Mouse or Donald Duck." If this is the case, cable and satellite companies will have to offer transparent technologies that make it clear when the camera is on, and when it's off, similar to the indicator that lights up on active webcams, among other privacy safeguards.

Greenscreen Mobile Teleconferencing on the iPad? It Could Happen

The focus of this deal is the set-top box, but Intel also makes computer processors, of course. Tombroff pointed out that a computer with recipes in the kitchen could benefit from touchless, gesture-based controls, and said he's in talks with a casino game manufacturer about making slot machines that can be played with gestures, in addition to military and medical device manufacturers.

This technology could also improve mobile teleconferencing. As of now, the cameras are too large, but Tombroff said he expects cheaper, smaller, more power-efficient versions to appear in cellphones and other battery-dependent devices eventually. By mashing depth data from a 3-D camera with visual data from a webcam, software can create an artificial backdrop, or include only video of the caller's face. Not only would this cut down significantly on the bandwidth required for mobile teleconferencing by eliminating nonessential visual data, but it would let people take business calls without the party on the other line knowing that they're at their kid's soccer game.

Set-top boxes with Intel's CE4100 chip will ship to Orange customers later this year or early next year, and there could be some kinks to work out before U.S. manufacturers decide to integrate the gesture-recognition feature. For instance, there's the issue of how the television knows when to take instruction, versus when you're reaching for a pretzel or gesturing because you want your team's running back to dodge right.

"You could raise your hand or shake your hand to capture the remote," said Tombroff. "It's also about controlling who in the family is the remote, if you have three people watching TV."

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