gesture control

It seems that the next smartphone trend after notches are button-less, swipe-based, pill-using navigation gestures. And, like the notch, we have Apple and its iPhone X to thank, or curse, for that. Android P will unabashedly have its own gestured-based navigation UI. If you're a fan of that feature, however, you need not wait that long or forever to get it. The folks over at XDA have released their own Navigation Gestures app that offers exactly that and a lot more. But while the app doesn't require root access, you'll need to aware of two important things before you go any further.

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You've probably noticed by now, but a lot of today's flagship phones have very similar feature lists and specification sheets. As a result, many manufacturers are looking for ways to make their phones stand out from the crowd. This isn't limited to just the realm of Android, either, as Apple is said to be considering two big features for future iPhones that could help differentiate them in an increasingly crowded market.

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A patent published this week points to Google having a deep knowledge of spacially aware gestures for control of devices of all sorts. We'd known that Google was working on tech to recognize our hands swiping through the air as controls for smartphones - but this is a bit different. This expands upon that - beyond the realm of pre-configured controls and into the world of DIY.

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Although it is a highly capable smartphone in its own right, the HTC U11 would have probably been overshadowed by the likes of the Galaxy S8 or even the OnePlus 5 if not for two things. One is a camera highly praised by DxOMark. The other is its squeezable Edge Sense gestures. Not unlike Samsung's Bixby, the version of Edge Sense that new HTC U11 owners got was raw and underwhelming. Now the company is assuring customers that more are yet to come, starting with these actions.

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Smartwatches are nifty hi-tech toys, but, unless they mature soon, they will remain as such, toys. In the face of competition from more focused, not to mention cheaper, smart fitness bands, smartwatches have a hard time breaking out of its niche market. That, however, doesn’t mean smartwatches aren’t capable. In fact, even run of the mill ones pack a piece of hardware that, when fine tuned and exploited, can actually make the smartwatch feel like a device from the future. And that hardware is none other than the accelerometer.

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We’re probably still a few decades away from a Minority Report computer display and interface and we’re definitely a few fictional universes removed from having enough Midichlorians to be Force-sensitive. So anything that gives us a semblance of telekinetic abilities, with hand-waving of course, is more than welcome. And there are a lot of those today. But what sets Bixi apart, at least based on its promise, is that it is the smallest, cheapest, most accurate, and most rugged gesture recognition device you’ll ever need to control anything from your smartphone to the GoPro camera sitting on your head.

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Most smartwatches these days, except for the likes of the Pebble, have touch screens that try to make using these wearable devices easier. But unlike the bigger touchscreens on our smartphones, the surface area of smartwatches make it harder to utilize multi-touch gestures. As such, most of the time users are limited to taps, tap and hold, and swipes. Researchers from the University of St. Andrews are proposing a new interaction method they have dubbed as WatchMI, which adds three more touch-based gestures to any smartwatch, without requiring additional hardware at all.

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When Apple introduced Force Touch and 3D Touch, it expanded the vocabulary of gestures we can use on smartphones by 1. However, it is still touch-based, short of mind control, the number of ways we can interact with our smartphones are basically limited to touch, voice, and some rudimentary Jedi hand waves. Engineers from the University of Michigan are working on yet another gesture, one that is both interesting yet almost comical at the same time. They want you to be able to squeeze your smartphone, not to death, but to control it.

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If you watched much TV in the last decade or so, you will remember the commercials for The Clapper. This was a gadget that could turn off the lights for you if you clapped. The modern version of The Clapper is a new device called Knocki that is able to turn any surface into a remote control for all manner of devices and software. Knocki attaches to a surface and turns that entire surface, be it a table, wall, or counter, into a touch interface.

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Fortunately the folks at Elliptic Labs are not making smart wearable devices for fetuses. What they're introducing instead is the world's first "EASY IoT software" that works with Ultrasound presence detection and gestures to command smart devices of all sorts. This is an Internet of Things-centric technology, detecting your body or just your hand, setting itself into waiting or active mode, ready to be used at your command. It's sort of like a remote start for your car - you're not in the car yet, but the car is already running.

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Apple reported to hire Doug A Bowman, a virtual reality specialist, 3D interface specialist, and computer science professor at Virginia Tech. Bowman is also Director of the Center for Human-Computer Interaction at Virginia Tech, and primary investigator for the 3D Interaction Group at Virginia Tech. This group participates in a "worldwide community of scholars and researchers in VR, AR, and 3D UIs". It may be that Apple is dipping their big toe into the virtual reality universe - or it could just be that Apple is thinking about how to make their Apple Car a unique proposition indeed.

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While this year we might see more and more manufacturers adopt "3D Touch" technology for their touchscreens, Elliptic Labs is trying to push a different way to make more expressive controls for smartphones and tablets. Almost llke a Jedi, Elliptic's ultrasonic gesture recognition system can let users wave or "force push" their way to taking selfies, playing games, or just simply navigating around the smartphone. And best of all, at least for OEMs, they won't need specialized hardware to make it all happen.

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