GESTURESPACE 2 @ ETH Library Zurich

Community Showcases
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This is my installation shown at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich, Switzerland. It is an interactive wall that can be controlled using touchless gestures. Visitors can browse in very old, rare books and image collections of cultural importance.

Using very simple touchless hand gestures, visitors can also do high-resolution zooms into the images. In this way, they can blow up the content face to face and interact with this virtual exhibit on a body level.

Video: http://vimeo.com/11443783 or http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ipviG-tWeAw

Information page, images: http://kai.jauslin.biz/gesturespace2

More technical aspects:
The visible frontend is done completely in Unity3D and C#. A C++ backend server is handling communication with the 3D Time-of-Flight camera and is sending gesture details using the OSC protocol. Everything in the installation is loaded asynchronously on demand using AssetBundles - from image collection to high-resolution versions of images. The installation is running since April 14th, 12 hours a day, 6 days a week. Extremely stable, never crashed so far.

The installation was created in just 3 months (from planning up to final installation). This would not have been possible without the speed and stability of the great Unity engine. :slight_smile:

More images on Flickr http://www.flickr.com/photos/81381691@N00/sets/72157623887802790/

Zooming into an image:

Shifting/Moving:

The perspective of the content adjusts to the position of the visitor:

The installation is public and can be visited at ETH library (ETH-Bibliothek, Zurich CH) until July 13th.

Cheers, Kai

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Nice work! I really like the fact that the display adjusts it’s angle based on the observer’s position.

These TOF cameras are awesome! Where can I get one?

Edit: This is infuriating, both canesta and pmd neglect to add any price or sourcing information to their websites. I want my 3D camera…!

Edit 2: Looks like they’re over $5k each, guess I’ll have to wait for natal and rip the data (or the camera if it doesn’t wanna give up the goods) out of that instead :frowning:

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Thanks!

Yeah, it’s quite difficult or expensive to get a 3d camera. The one for gesturespace is from MESA imaging (www.mesa-imaging.ch). It’s really a great little camera.

It’ll be very interesting to get hands on an XBox Natal controller and see how good it really is…

Kai

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The future is apparently now! That’s incredible stuff there! I didn’t think I would see such technology and interactivity for another 10 years at least! This is the stuff I can’t wait to have in everyday life! PC’s kiosks with that kind of navigation would be awesome! Reminds me of all the tech shown in sci-fi movies!