RC India

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nZ-VjUKAsao&feature=player_embedded

Pranav is a NID Ahemdabad Grad, and currently in MIT I guess.
I was lucky to intern along with Pranav at Microsoft R&D Hyderabad in the autumn of 2005, before he left to MIT. Pranav was real down to earth person and a marvel in UI design. He worked for 'Project Veda' at Microsoft, a sub $100 laptop for schools.
That time we never knew that we had such a genius around!! Kudos! Wish to see his vision hit the markets soon.

WOW

I never understood why people are so impressed by this. What he has shown is not a real device. We are quite a few years away from making the technology practical. The projector and image recognition to some extend can be done in a portable device today. But we are far away from getting the device to recognize what the brain wants, it is certainly not possible to communicate all that with 4 fingers. The video sets you up to expect a watch then shows you a watch. What if I had a scratch on my hand there and wanted information on what medicine to apply ? I'd be upset if this device insists on showing me the time when I'm in pain.

What he has shown is imagination, but then I have seen the similar stuff in so many movies. It is the cynical engineer in me talking, but show me a real device that does something innovative and I'd be more impressed.

i agree with you this is not a practicle thing right now to use just a piece of work by some one who is so fond off doing some inovative thing.  many of us have seen this before .

This is what I am writing here from my personal interaction with Pranav at Pool table.

The way way we interact with computer has not changed much. First it were toggle switches, then came Keyboard, Xerox got the mouse and recently we got Touch input. Speech recognition for Keyboard input never worked and products from Dragon/Kurzweil ended only with IVR systems ( I tried to train MS Dictation for coding in C++, it was more of a comedy show)

Pranav is researching in what is called 'Natural machine Interaction', which depends much on AI as on these Hardware like projector. He is not a programmer, he is visionary - just like those who perceived the TV series Star Trek and intrigued other inventors. Many of modern inventor, including Martin Cooper the inventor of Cellphone, that hadn't been it from Star Trek, he would have never thought of inventing Cell Phone.
There were many devices which were always a science fantasy - Video Phones, Flying Car, Time machine, some of them have at least become reality in the recent times. For others we have to wait.

There are things which were invented/discovered accidentally - AC Current, Penicillin, Vulcanized Rubber and America! For the rest of others, you need persistent vision.

For Rajesh sir's delight, the '4 finger' kind of input is already  available for the latest Xbox:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kinect
Object of the future could be much closer than they appear in your understanding'
-Yours truly

This stuff is SWEET!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Damn I wish I had one.

i completely agree with Ujjwal,
because if wright brothers & skirosky invented plane n helicopter yesterday ,people would be talking today "it can hardly fly 100ft & it can harldly lift one man ",same thing happening here ,
wright brothers never thought future planes can do unimaginable things,like flying half the globe with 500 passengers nonstop,flying at thrice the speed of sound  and lifting 20,000 kg vertically!

its just a initiation!

Yeah.It won't take long for it to be implemented.

Good to hear he is working on 'Natural machine Interaction'. As I said in the earlier comment that would impress me if he can pull it off. The way human brain makes decisions far beyond the capabilities of today's machines. His presentation however showed nothing of this sort.  To make it work in all every day situations like it was portrayed in the video is not feasible today. What was shown in the video is a specific predefined response to a specific predefined input. Any decent programmer and a hardware engineer can put together such a system using readily available components, nothing special about it.

What I specially didn't like is that he misleads the audience on the capabilities of his invention. When I hold out my palm, may be I want to read the newspaper or I want a calculator or I want to watch tv, not make a phone call. Can his 'invention' figure out what I really want and give me that ? He pretends it does and that is misleading.



There you go, if that video shows innovation, so does a lot of movies. So why should I be more impressed seeing his presentation compared to say "back to the future". With the constant power cuts in bangalore, I would love to get hold of a flux capacitor.


Not sure why you thought it would delight me. I said it has severe limitations in conveying my thoughts to a machine. If you know different, I'd be glad to learn.

Its already done.(pretty much)Just one or two years and we can have it working.A few more years and it will be accessible to all.We need to support this guy.

Well,,obviously ,he doesn't need much, but we can encourage him

+1

Vision/Dream...
....
Scaled down prototypes...
<----  Time passes and technology advances
More prototypes...
....
Failures/Rejections...
....
....
....
....
Glory !

;)

Well its easy to add extra features once we have a strong base. Pranav has made this base and features can be added. So the applications are limitless - the video just shows the base :)
The ides itself should recieve credit. Many times the person who comes up with the application is well known and not the person who comes up with the concept. Pranav is the one with the concept and deserves credit :)
@rotorzone - the gestures are not hardwired into the system and can be changed to suit your needs. To display information about the scratch all you need is a different gesture, can be easily delt with.
 "Any decent programmer and a hardware engineer can put together such a system using readily available components, nothing special about it." - yes thats true but no one did come forth with such a thing even though they could :)

The projector shouldnt be an issue - its just an approach, Alternatively one could use an OLED which can even be printed onto ones shirt and display what ever you want - display is limitted to ones imagination. 

@vineet: we have to appriciate innovation as well :) Its these innovations which leads to products that make life so comfortable and convenient. :) similar to praveens post.

+1

The idea isn't really new. The mobile projector and projected keypad are commercially available products for a few years. His innovation was supposed to be how it gets the information that I want into display. But that is so obviously vaporware.

So when you need a different result, you go write a new firmware, upload it to the device and then see the result ??? I could single handedly create this device, but I see no use for it. How many of you would pay $350 for a device to hang around your neck just to see time ? It has to do much much more before I'd pay anything for it. And he hasn't even shown a glimpse of any new user interface or intelligent interpretation technology.

Wanna wager on that ? And I promise I will not send bookies to Pranav to fix the result :)
Sure, but then by that yard stick, aren't all those sci fi movie script writers also visionaries ? I watch a movie when I want to see futuristic sci fi, that is not my expectation when I watch a technology presentation. What makes people believe this guy and not what you saw in Terminator or Minority Report ? It had to be done by showing some credible new technology or algorithm or such. But I saw nothing of that sort in the presentation.

I don't think people microsoft or MIT were fools to work with him. He must have something that impressed them. What ever it is he has been hiding it well in the presentations. The grouse still remains he hasn't shown anything more than a sci fi script writer in public to warrant such appreciation. He is a good presenter all right, but I know when he is taking me for a ride.

Seeing the reaction here I have to revise my statement, I do understand how many people were impressed. May be I'm just a difficult man to impress.

Haha yup you are a hard man to impress :)

"I don't think people microsoft or MIT were fools to work with him. He must have something that impressed them. What ever it is he has been hiding it well in the presentations." What do you suggest he is hiding? Justt curious. :D

Wanna wager on that ? And I promise I will not send bookies to Pranav to fix the result.


sure rotorzone.We are INDIANS.Unlike other fixing we know :giggle: :giggle:(Nobody is being hinted at here.Any relation to the statement I have made is purely co incidental :giggle: :giggle: :giggle: :giggle: :giggle: :giggle:

What I am saying is that let us just give him some more time.I'm pretty sure he will make something useful.

Well, I was impressed by the use of the 4 mouse wheels with strings and weights as a motion tracking device ;)

Shoot... I am so easy to impress :giggle:

That is a practical device that works, not fantasy. You don't have to feel so bad for being impressed.

MIT and microsoft would have kicked him out if all he delivered was movies. There must be a contribution from him towards making it a real device. I'd like to see that part.

Yeah.Let us just give him some time.

agreed with rotor