Panopticon
Camera for gesture recognition + internet-connected appliance + typical security-hole-riddled system software = paradise for peeping toms and other spies.
Finger gestures in three dimensions are the next big thing in controlling computers, or so we're sadly told. The companies betting that we'll want to manipulate everything electronic around us with a wave of a hand are already laying claim to various types of body movement. The technology to detect gestures is included in …
> aggressively patenting all sorts of gestures
This sort of stupidity is what gets people all heated up over patents.
Patenting a clever technology that allows gestures in general to be recogised is one thing, but allowing companies to patent each possible gesture as an individual item is just plain daft. We could do with sending a few choice gestures in the direction of the USPO.
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I'm not really up on all this bollocks so I'm confused : what's the difference between that and the Samsung S3's "Swipe to unlock". Or am I using an illegal phone?
Anyway, in response to the request for opinions on gestures 'most useful in controlling my technology', my favourite is the meaningful stare while holding a hammer.
I carry, in my pocket, a jackknife that my Grandfather forged. It has a 5 inch blade. I have to press a little button and pull back a small guard before I can open the blade with a simple flick of the thumb or wrist.
My daughter carries a replica that I forged. She, in turn forged a replica that my granddaughter will be allowed to carry, assuming she turns out sane (she's not quite 3 years old).
All these "gestures" have been around since before there were tubes/transistors ...
Nice to hear someone is still keeping up metal forging as a skill!
As for anyone who down-votes you, ignore them, I've carried a pen-knife or multi-tool of some form or another since I was about 7 or 8!
But on your point, I agree the slide to unlock and similar patents are stupid, while i could agree if they have some form of technological solution patent that, but patenting an action itself? that is wrong and I am 99% sure would not be allowed in the EU (didn't Apples slide to unlock get thrown out recently?)
I believe there is 'prior art' in the domain of 'putting this nonsense to rest'. Wasn't there a judgement reached regarding API's as 'unpatentable' or some such.
Seeing as the 'remote technology' is your hand or some combination of body parts shouldn't gesture control be considered as an API and therefore falls under the same judgement?
We can live in hope I suppose.
Otherwise consider the general sentiment coming from the responses so far agreed to wholeheartedly...
"so there's an ongoing race to establish the most intuitive physical articulation for common actions"
They want to patent the gestures that are the most obvious ones for people to use for particular actions. And they want the 'invention' of these gestures to be patentable on the grounds that they are not obvious.
I presume it is not possible to patent the use of the phrase "Turn Off!" to turn off a television? So why should it be possible to patent a gesture that means the same thing? Sure you can patent the technology that interprets the gesture, but the gesture itself - what's the difference between that and a verbal command?
"I presume it is not possible to patent the use of the phrase "Turn Off!" to turn off a television? So why should it be possible to patent a gesture that means the same thing? Sure you can patent the technology that interprets the gesture, but the gesture itself - what's the difference between that and a verbal command?"
Mills in Lawyers fees.
Yes of course. Using a finger to lips to indicate "STFU" is totally novel, has never been used before, is certainly not in comon use elsewhere and there's no prior art for it.
</Extraordinarily heavy sarcasm>
Anyone care to explain why detecting that with a camera / sensor / whatever, before acting on it in the usually understood manner, is in any way different to doing so with eyeballs?
I'd like to patent the following gesture to mean "You can shove your shite patent where the sun shineth not": [Sticks two fingers up in the general direction of Tel Aviv].
How can anybody believe that this is useful. It can't possibly be in the interest of consumers having to remember different gestures to achieve the same result on different manufacturers' kit.
Say I have a certain brand of TV, and I've carefully learnt all the gestures required to control it. Maybe manufacturers will now see that I am locked in as I am less likely to want to relearn these skills if I switch to a different brand of TV. But the truth is that I (and vast numbers of people with less interest in learning arcane hand movements) will just not bother using these features, and will probably be more inclined to choose a brand that doesn't waste our time with them. All in all an own goal.
Imagine cars, if in the early days someone had patented 'using little sticks on the control column to operate the indicators' or 'moving the gear lever in an H pattern to move through a sequence of gears'. Nobody would have a clue what they were doing. Standardisation helps everybody, and rushing to patent obvious things just blocks the development of usable standards.
"A loud clatter of gunk music flooded through the Heart of Gold cabin as Zaphod searched the sub-etha radio wave bands for news of himself. The machine was rather difficult to operate. For years radios had been operated by means of pressing buttons and turning dials; then as the technology became more sophisticated the controls were made touch-sensitive--you merely had to brush the panels with your fingers; now all you had to do was wave your hand in the general direction of the components and hope. It saved a lot of muscular expenditure, of course, but meant that you had to sit infuriatingly still if you wanted to keep listening to the same program."
That PointGrab one seems to have been filed at about the same time the Kinect was released, too... which implies that any tech demos of the Kinect working would seem to be prior art even without searching very hard.
The actual workings of the Kinect and the software that underpins it are not actually that novel (all 80s computer vision stuff... its the fact the Kinect/Xbox can do it in real time that's the clever bit) so there are probably reams of papers going back decades covering the same stuff. The fact that the patent was allowed in the first place is embarassing, and given the long history of computer vision and gesture recognition research I don't really see how a specific gesture could be claimed to be a significant inventive step that advances the state of the art.
Meanwhile the rest of the industry is held back by this sort of stupidity. Wonderful.
I'd like a gesture where you can change channels, and volume, simply by moving your thumb tiny, effortless amounts.
Might be a bit hard to pick up with current cameras, so a small device might need to be held in the hand to relay the gestures. Might have space for a few dozen more commands too that can be performed similarly effortlessly.
I see you 1950s radio and raise you the sliding bolt, proundly implementing "slide to unlock" functionality for many civilisations for at least the last 3000 years of human history.
http://www.historicallocks.com/en/site/hl/Other-locks/Locks-of-wood-and-iron/Sliding-bolt-locks/
Exactly how much prior art is needed do you think?
I already use gestures.
Using 1 finger, I make a pressing action onto a button and hey presto!, sky changes channel, or adjusts the volume, or letters appear on a screen, etc.....
Of course my favourite being a "your a total fcking wanker" motion to the retards are surrounded by, followed by a verbal gesture to indicate that their mother didn't do a very good job!
"...we invite El Reg readers to tell us [...] in the hope that [...] making it public here will significantly increase the chance of you one day getting to use it."
Sorry, but prior art no longer counts under the US rules. It's "first to file" over there, not "first to invent". This is one of the reasons why the system stopped working 20 years ago. (The other being that the US also disregard "obviousness".)
The US no longer checks for either of the key principles (novelty and non-obviousness) that were the bedrock of the international treaties that set up the system. The system will remain broken until the rest of the world recognises that the US voluntarily withdrew from the system 20 years ago and so no patent granted in the US since then has been valid outside the US. Sorry, my American friends, but a deal is a deal and you can't expect others to uphold their side (honour your patents) after you renege on your side (checking them properly).