Sunnyvale, California-based GestureTek [1] announced at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas last week that its patented, award-winning software for gesture-based mobile device interaction now supports the Android operating system.
In addition, the company is also launching a brand new engine that allows Windows Mobile publishers and developers to integrate motion and object tracking into their gesture-control games and applications.
GestureTek’s new momo for Windows Mobile uses a mobile device’s camera to track objects and motion within the camera’s field of view. The engine offers interfaces for two trackers – the Motion tracker which determines interaction by following specific movement and the Mosaic tracker which tracks objects, including faces and hands. They provide developers with a vast array of options when developing gesture control applications.
“Momo makes possible groundbreaking mobile games that can respond to hand motions over menu items and even track the position of the user’s head,” says Yoshi Kumagai, GestureTek’s senior vice-president of mobile.
The eyemo uses the camera on a mobile device to sense and report device motion. The software is already enabled on multiple platforms, including the Symbian, Brew, Java, Windows Mobile and Linux platforms, enabling a ‘joystick’, ‘force of motion’ and ‘menu selection’ style of interaction.
“Now eyemo software can also be added to camera-enabled handsets operating on the Android platform, providing users with fun and intuitive gesture-based interactivity,” says Kumagai.
GestureTek’s eyemo software can be delivered over the air or embedded directly into many camera-enabled devices, with no special hardware or design updates required. It’s an easy to implement software solution that makes adding gesture control more cost-effective for manufacturers.
Once the software is enabled, users can shake, rock or roll their phone to play games, answer calls, shuffle playlists, navigate maps, scroll, pan, zoom, turn pages and even browse the web – all without pressing a button or touching the screen.
Now momo takes touch-free control even further. Users can control the action using specific hand or body gestures – with no movement of the device required.
GestureTek software has widespread applications in many consumer electronics products. Many developers are already using GestureTek software to bring immersive, gesture-based interactivity to a variety of platforms, including PCs, laptops and toys.
“Greater accessibility to GestureTek’s gesture recognition software is significant for developers in the mobile and consumer electronics space,” says Vincent John Vincent, president of GestureTek. “Developers now have the ability to create gesture-control games and applications for multiple platforms and to develop for multiple mobile devices, including those with hardware-based gesture control solutions (such as accelerometers) and software-based gesture control solutions.”
GestureTek software is available on millions of mobile devices worldwide, including on NTT DoCoMo [2] phones in Japan, and is used in more than 200 mobile applications. GestureTek’s software supports multiple platforms, including Windows Mobile, Brew, Java, Symbian, Nucleus, Android and Linux. Selected handsets enabled with GestureTek’s software include models from Sony Ericsson [3], Nokia [4], NEC [5], HTC [6], Motorola [7], Samsung [8] and LG [9].
GestureTek is the inventor and key patent-holder in video gesture-control software for interactive displays and devices. GestureTek’s two groundbreaking tracking engines use the camera in a mobile device to provide an easy-to-implement touch-free user interface for mobile games and applications. GestureTek was the recipient of the 2008 GSMA Mobile Innovation Global Award. Offices: California, Toronto, Ottawa, Asia.