Pranav Mistry's cursor to invisible world

BANGALORE, INDIA: A complete departure from Manoj Nightshyamalan's spooky Sixth Sense, Pranav Mistry's SixthSense is an invisible trailer to the future of reality. The fascination for tiniest computers wearable as watches or as pendants is quite understandable, but going a step further it isn't impossible to make the entire world your computer.

Giving a humane touch to computing, largely perceived as inanimate, Pranav Mistry, research assistant and PhD candidate at the MIT Media Lab. An inventor and innovator, Mistry has been working zealously to bridge the gap between human and artificial intelligence (read computing) by integrating digital information with the real world.

"Arguably, the most useful information that can help us make the right decision is not naturally perceivable with our five senses, namely the data, information and knowledge that mankind has accumulated about everything and which is increasingly all available online," he says.

Pretty evidently, there is no link between digital devices and our interactions with the physical world, but Pranav's SixthSense bridges this gap, bringing intangible, digital information out into the tangible world, and allowing us to interact with this information via natural hand gestures. With a passion to see technology from design perspective and vice versa, he proudly calls himself 'Desigineer'.

For this man, impossible is a mere dictionary term: "Many of my projects are inspired by Indian mythology. In ancient times, people could expand body parts." Well, that explains it all.

Here, we list few of his projects, which are interesting, invisible and interactive. In all, they are just incredible.

SIXTHSENSE: Wearable gesture technology
It may not be apt to say it is an offline interaction. ‘SixthSense’, a wearable gesture technology, enables use of hand gestures to interact with information in the physical world. Through a camera, pocket projector and a mirror coupled in a pendant like mobile wearable device, SixthSense enhances the surface or object we are interacting with. The projector and the camera are connected to the mobile computing device in the user’s pocket.

The projector projects visual information enabling surfaces, walls and physical objects around us to be used as interfaces; while the camera recognizes and tracks user's hand gestures and physical objects using computer-vision based techniques. The software program processes the video stream data captured by the camera and tracks the locations of the colored markers. The current prototype system costs approximate $350 to build.

MOUSELESS-- An invisible Mouse
Invisible is no longer the exclusive asset of magicians. Mistry's Mouseless is an invisible computer mouse that provides the familiarity of interaction of a physical mouse without actually needing a real hardware mouse. An Infrared (IR) laser beam and an Infrared camera are embedded in the computer. The user cups his/her hand, as if a mouse is present underneath, and the laser beam lights up the hand which is in contact with the surface.

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'PRECURSOR': a screen on screen

Going beyond the current touchscreens, PreCursor is an invisible layer in front of the screen which enables interaction through a click. Using a computer mouse provides two levels of depth when interacting with content on a screen and the technology has the potential to expand beyond a basic computer screen. Hover allows receiving short descriptions, while click selects or performs an action.

THIRDEYE: One screen, multiple views
One screen, many views. Sounds a bit weird, but that's an innovation. ThirdEye enables multiple viewers to see different things on a same display screen at the same time. With ThirdEye, you can have a public sign board where a Japanese tourist sees all the instructions in Japanese and an American in English. This abolishes the need to have the split screen in games. Each player can see his/her personal view of the game on the TV screen.

 (Inputs from http://www.pranavmistry.com/)