Edible Apple

Microsoft’s Kinect add-on to the Xbox 360 certainly provides a new twist to traditional gaming. In case you’re unfamiliar, Kinect enables gamers to control on-screen action by using their bodies. Kinect works via 3D motion sensing technology which can detect an array of gestures and even facial features – and now comes word that similar gesture-recognition technology will be hitting the iPad, though not directly from Apple.

MobileMag reports that Elliptic Labs will reveal their Touchless Gesture User Interface technology at CES 2011. Elliptic Labs sprung forth from the signal processing environment at the University of Oslo and what they’ve come up with is an iPod dock which creates a “touchless zone” that extends out about 1 foot in front and to the sides of the iPad screen. Users can then initiate a number of gestures to manipulate onscreen content. As an example, users can swipe their hands in the air to scroll threw icons or various pages on an app. Another supported gesture is the ability to start and stop a song from playing by pushing one’s hand towards the iPad.

In an interview with Elliptic Labs CEO Stian Aldrin, Aldrin explained:

The idea is that you use touchless gestures to operate primary functions of a docked tablet in situations like when you have wet or greasy hands in the kitchen. In general tablets are made for being handheld. When it is docked you are often walking or standing further away, and then using a finger on the screen involves a change of modality. Rather than bending down, leaning forward or picking it up you can use larger movements a little bit further away to do things like volume up or next song without changing modality.

Again, Elliptic Labs will show off their technology at CES 2011 which is scheduled to kick off on January 6. Incidentally, Aldrin notes that all of the hardware and sensors used in their technology are “off the shelf components”.

Check out a video demo of the device below.

Talk about the “wave” of the future.