Adding a ‘SixthSense’ to Your Cellphone – Bits Blog – NYTimes.com

Dispose of those keyboards and screens… Make the cell phone into a funnel for information….

Mr. Mistry, a 28-year-old research assistant at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Media Lab, demonstrated what one such interface might look like at the TEDIndia conference taking place this week in Mysore, India, about three hours west of Bangalore.

Pranav Mistry, speaking at the TEDIndia conference.James Duncan Davidson/TED Pranav Mistry, speaking at the TEDIndia conference.

He calls it SixthSense, and it uses a camera and projector brought together in a pendant that is worn around the neck.

His prototype, and the software that powers it, works with smartphones and turns walls, sheets of paper and other surfaces into screens for, say, browsing the Web. The camera translates gestures into commands — for example, you can hold up both your hands to frame a scene and flick your thumb to take a picture. Aim the device at an airplane boarding pass and the projector flashes the status of your upcoming flight. Mr. Mistry even demonstrated a clever way to copy and paste text from a printed page.

via Adding a ‘SixthSense’ to Your Cellphone – Bits Blog – NYTimes.com.