UIST 2011 - Imaginary Phone

Imaginary Phone allows users to control their mobile devices without taking it out of their pocket. Instead, users mimic the interaction on the palm of their hand. The interaction is tracked by a wearable depth camera which sends input events to the actual physical device. By mimicking the layout of the physical device, here an iPhone, users can operate the device based on spatial memory built up while using the physical device.

More info at http://www.hpi.uni-potsdam.de/baudisc...

The shown work is a research project by Sean Gustafson, Christian Holz and Prof. Patrick Baudisch at the Human Computer Interaction Lab at Hasso Plattner Institute, Potsdam, Germany.

• Category

  Science & Technology

[byte2702]

P.S. Please let the video online. It isn't useless. It's the opposite. Many people just don't understand the potential behing these technique. It's the future. And many people will use it soon. It's already in XBOX and Wii. ;-)

[Sean Gustafson]

Thanks for the very nice comments. If you would like, send me a email (address is on my website) - I would love to hear about your project.

[uuchoob]

fucking stupid idea.

so you need to memorise what is on your phone too in order to imagine it???

[wuiqed]

Innovation always brings out the idiots. "OMG THIS IDEA IS SO STUPID". They can only imagine one use for the innovation, and this use is something that's unattractive to them, and they conclude that it's stupid and useless. Then, 5 years later, they're doing something awesome, based on the same technology, and loving it.

[Grivahri]

imaginary phone, the new iPhone, the i*iPhone, the -Phone

[Atma Jnani]

..reminds me of Zoe from Caprica -tvseries- and the use of a paper to go online ..

[gamedexterity]

Chuck Norris uses his phone like that

[bookfluid]

the video is perfect without any iphone in it the hand gestures are incredibly precise and almost intimidating

[byte2702]

The depth-buffer is important for machine vision, too. As far as I know, Android devices can't read the depth-buffer since it isn't supported there. You have to go other ways there. There are still other and maybe better alternatives at the moment. But maybe the stereoscopic camera will be used more often in the future because of the 3D movies. And maybe it's more performant then, too. Who knows?

[byte2702]

I rather thought of machine vision here, as possible part of Augmented Reality. Okay, devices with stereoscopic camera may be rare. But it's possible that they will produce more devices in the future here, too. See LG-V900 Optimus Pad. I don't know the future. ;-)

[uuchoob]

you mean kinect? But the difference is you can visually see what you are controlling. This is just the same idea but you are forced to imagine what you are controlling. It's like going a step backwards.

[uuchoob]

sorry, the concept is nice but the implementation is stupid. There is no need for an imaginary phone unless I am missing something here. You are limited by your capability to memorise things. The whole point of having a smartphone is so that it is easy to use, so having an imaginary phone kind of defeats the purpose of that.

[J4rj4r81nx]

It's called muscle memory..

Do anything enough times and you don't even think about it. It's a basic human capability... set the physical phone up to how you want it, get used to it and then switch.

-Prevents wear and tear

-looks cool (nerdy and cool are synonymous in instances such as these)

-is a convenient means to control something while say showing a friend that video you saw that awesome new technology in, as seen above.

[David Polák]

This is Amazing! Soooo much could be done with this technology! Depth camera... must research that term. So cool.