Imaginary interface sans screens lets you communicate via hand motions

We have been legions to various kinds of interfaces now; anything from keyboards to touchscreen and multitouch to gestures have impressed us in bits. While you may be impressed by the all unique retina display of the iPhone 4 and its lush interface, Sean Gustafson of Potsdam University's Hasso Plattner Institute, Germany doesn’t feel all too impressed. Thus, he visions an imaginary interface which’ll allow the users to imagine and use their own graphical interface to navigate a device (or will it be a device at all) instead of relying on the touchpad, mouse, buttons or screens etc. to navigate preconfigured options on a display.

imaginary interface

Unlike any interface ever before, Sean’s imaginary interface would use a two-inch square camera based device to be worn on the chest, while a ring of LEDs would be used to project infrared light to let the camera interpret gestures. Using this system, a user can imagine a personal interface; as Clay Dillow of PopSci explains:

“for instance, by making an "L" shape with the non-dominant hand the user creates an imaginary plane in which the interface will exist. From there, the device has to do some learning, but the user can place buttons -- say, a "send" button for messages or an area for making simple sketches with the hands -- wherever he or she wants in space. If a user truly forgets the location of something within the interface, it can simply be redrawn.”

The interface seems a cool sci-fi-cal idea, which after some tweaking could make the real world for our souls to try.