Leap Motion – Hand motion to interact with your computer

Imagine using your fingers to work on your screen. No keyboard, no mouse. Just natural hand movement to scroll, paint, play and write, basically control your computer. Amazing isn’t it? That’s the next big leap. Touch screen is passé. GenNext is about to step into the Leap Motion mode.

What is Leap Motion?

For many of you to whom it all sounds unbelievable, it’s true. Leap motion has launched, been about a year, and your interaction with your PC will never be the same again. It’s the next generation of user interfaces, at a very nascent stage, where you communicate with your hands and fingers in motion, literally.

So how does it all happen? Well, it is basically a small device that allows you to use hand movements to instruct your pc to carry out desired action. The device comes with two sets of cable. The small handy device has three sets of infrareds that track finger movement. There have already been three software revisions to upgrade its performance.  Like I said, it is at a very early stage, and so right now, there are really a very limited amount of tasks you can carry out using the Leap Motion Technology. But, every day, there are new apps being developed and introduced into the market that use technology to do crazy and fun activities.

The best thing about it is the device is extremely handy, and with the way it absorbs motion, it has a huge potential to do things, with just a wave of a finger. And priced at below $80, it is affordable, so one can actually use it to develop it further. The technology is simply out of the box, one step ahead of what we use currently, so it can achieve a lot more in terms of user acceptance in the months and years to come.

The Leap Motion comes with its own App store called the Airspace, where you can browse and download apps which work on Leap Motion on both OS Mac and Windows. You can find free as well as paid apps in the store, including apps from third parties. From Games to creative tools, music and entertainment apps, creative tools, educational tools and science and experimental tools, you find them all here.

One of the poignant things that come to notice instantly once you start using the device for a while is that it is extremely sensitive to motion. So for beginners, it definitely needs some bit of training and learning to get along with the device without conflict. The good part is you can train the device to perform activities for you with pre determined movements. For example, you can assign a certain action to a certain movement of your fingers, or pre-set a different action for a clap of your hands. One of the most effective and popular app to this effect is the BetterTouchTool, an app that helps you assign roles to each hand movement and better control your PC with your hand movement. The other factor to watch out for is the device is sensitive to external gadgets like your watch, camera, and mobile phone etc, basically everything that it can get a reflection from.

A word of caution for all the excited newcomers, it is not a replacement to your traditional mouse. With the device, you can manage and control your computer to a great extent (and that too depends on the apps you choose to download). You can plug and play; there are already a host of games and fun apps that will get you started. However, for all the other reasons we use a computer, the Leap Motion is yet to evolve to give us a comprehensive user experience. It has a long way to go. Hopefully, we will soon see a range of further development to capitalize the latest technology to deliver more complex and compelling tasks.