At CES 2014, Epson showed off its Moverio BT-200 smart glasses – just one of myriad Google Glass competitors seen at the show. But this month the company upped the ante by pairing its Moverio glasses with a wearable Thalmic Labs Myo armband that allows for gesture control of applications that Epson says move beyond the vision of gestural computing made famous in "Minority Report," which was set in the year 2054.
Sean McCracken, smart glasses app developer and CEO of Imaginary Computer recently showed off a few apps that take advantage of the marriage of an augmented reality heads-up display and gesture control at South By Southwest in Austin, Texas.
For example, users who don both wearables can make a fist to grab a data stream projected in their field of vision and move it with their arms to relocate it on a virtual desktop, rather than the stationary hardware display used in the 2002 film with Tom Cruise.
In the video below, McCracken shows how the Moverio glasses and Myo armband can be used to provide a second screen experience overlaid on top of a real-life field of vision that allows users to keep tabs on social feeds like Facebook or Twitter while watching TV or even a live event like a sporting match-up.
McCracken describes the concept as a "3D gyro-based desktop system" that works through a combination of not just arm movements registered by the Myo armband, but also by turning your head while wearing the Moverio glasses.
The end result is a pretty immersive experience that isn't quite what we were promised in "The Lawnmower Man," but that's probably a good thing.
Source: Epson
