Texas Instruments has been trying to improve all aspects of the smartphone experience with its dual-core OMAP4 chipset, that is about to enter devices next year. Its Image Signal Processing has been tailored for, among others, recognizing bodily gestures based on the input from a cheap 2D camera in low, or bright light conditions. Together with the Israeli Extreme Reality (XTR), it demoed a touchless gesture recognition system, which was doing simple interactions with a smartphone like swiping without touching the screen.
Today TI and XTR announced that they are taking the partnership to the next level, probably teaming up to deliver the technology to OMAP4 phones next year. Texas Instruments is even taking an equity stake in Extreme Reality, that's how promising it thinks XTR's technology is. It would be handy to just wave and snap at your phone to make it scroll, zoom or rotate stuff, instead of leaving greasy marks all over the screen, but how will the technology handle more advanced interaction, remains to be seen.
The partners showed a prototype at the MWC this year in February, but the XTR founder mentions that the next generation will look entirely different. It should be able to differentiate whole body movements, volume, distance, and even recognize two-handed gestures. A brief video of the technology from this year's MWC is embedded below.
Hopefully next year DROIDs for Verizon will be with the OMAP4 chipset and this technology inside. Whew, we can finally check email in the precarious situation after eating a whole KFC bucket, but leaving the napkins far away.
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