User Interface - At CES 2013, presenters at Intel’s press conference highlighted their recent efforts on providing computers with more natural human interfaces. Intel began their press conference with a rundown and listing of design wins for their processors and processor roadmap for smartphones. After reviewing their progress penetrating the smartphone space, Intel moved on to the notebook and tablet computers. Intel sees a convergence of the notebook and tablet PC space to one that is defined by ultrabooks, convertibles and detachables. That is, computers which are much lighter, with longer battery life, instant on capability, many of which can be converted or detached to use as tablet PCs. Intel sees this trend accelerating as their fourth generation Core processor (Haswell) is launched later in 2013. Intel also sees these computers providing for more natural interaction using voice and mandatory touch input features.
During the final 10 minutes of their press conference, Intel emphasized its Perceptual Computing initiative that they claim will include eyes, ears, voice, touch, emotion and context in applying natural human interfaces. Achin Bhowmik, Intel’s Director of Perceptual Computing Technology, demonstrated a number of Intel’s natural human interface developments.
Achin Bhowmik, Intel Director of Perceptual Computing Technology
On the voice recognition side, Intel has partnered with Nuance to launch Dragon Assistant, which is shipping in beta form in Dell notebooks and ramping up in additional products. Bhowmik also demonstrated a facial recognition based login application that eliminates manual user password entry and incorporates sophisticated anti-spoofing features that eliminate fraudulent logins.
The company then described gesture recognition hardware and a software developer kit (SDK) for gesture recognition. The Intel Perceptual Computing SDK was launched at the Intel Developer Forum. Intel says a USB powered Interactive Gesture Camera device will be offered at retail in cooperation with Creative. The SDK provides for detailed 10 finger gesture recognition rather than more coarse grain hand movement recognition. Achin Bhowmik demonstrated the gesture recognition capability using a gaming example as shown in the photo below.
Finally, Intel described the development of eye tracking hardware and applications with partner Tobii. Bhowmik used an application based on the popular Where’s Waldo children’s books to illustrate application of the eye tracking capability by locating and selecting Waldo on successive book pages using only his eye gaze.
At their press conference, Intel showed an impressive roadmap for mobile device processors moving forward. By concluding the Intel press event with their view of advanced human computer interface techniques and applications, Intel is looking forward to providing users with new and more capable means of interacting with their ever more capable devices. – Phil Wright
