Gestural interactive software about to reach the consumer

The software shown in the film “Minority Report”, a system that Tom Cruise travels quickly a video projected onto a large screen through simple hand gestures, is about to reach the real world. The program developed by scientist John Underkoffler was marketed by Oblong Industries in Los Angeles as a quick way to scan a large amount of data and video.

The software will be used by law enforcement and intelligence services, although not a program for early detection of crime, as was made in the science fiction film 2002 by Steven Spielberg.

Kwin Kramer, chief executive of Oblong, says the program can help search through “large amounts of data” of the information needed. It can also improve the capabilities of videoconferencing in which participants share data from various devices like smartphones and tablets that are part of a large sample of video.


“We think the future of computing will be multi-user and multi-multi” Kramer told AFP.

“The system will help with the problems due to the volume of work,” he added.

A large part of the system is the interface of gestures, which the company calls the spatial operating environment “g-speak”.

This environment is developed in a draft Underkoffler, then a scientist at MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology), for “Minority Report”, before he became chief scientist of Oblong emerging company.

“We have demo versions of such software that shows exactly what the user experience of ‘Minority Report’, allowing you to move backwards and forwards in time, or focus, and notice the details,” says Kramer.

Says the same software can help businesses to “achieve better collaboration, visualization and analysis of large amounts of data.”

“You can have lots of data but is difficult to make good use of it,” explains Kramer.

Gestural interfaces have been developed by other companies such as Microsoft Kinect, but Oblong says it is much more sophisticated. Some systems use a highly sensitive data glove may be much more accurate than the naked hand movements.

Oblong has contracts with companies like Boeing, General Electric and Saudi Aramco to help them analyze large amounts of data. Oblong is also developing a gestural interface for computers on board with the car maker Audi.

The company has assembled an undefined amount of capital from investors including Foundry Group, Energy Technology Ventures and Morgan Stanley Alternative Investment Partners.

Brad Feld, Foundry Group CEO Oblong says provides “a critical path to change the way we interact with computers.”

Although the question that often receives Oblong is how users can get software “Minority Report”.

However, what differs from the real-life vision software is seen in the film that does not provide the analytical Oblong division “pre-crime.”

But this does not prevent law enforcement or intelligence agencies use the software and add their own analytics.