Pointing and waving your hands are set to become widely-used ways of interacting with mobile phones, according to a new study from ABI Research. It says the detection of vision-based gestures - physical movements identified by a camera or other sensors - will offer an additional input method for 600 million smartphones in 2017.
Josh Flood, senior analyst at ABI Research, said “Gesture recognition is a very exciting prospect, particularly for smartphones and tablets. These devices are already heavily entrenched into peoples’ lives and another communication interface is always very welcome.”
Camera-based gesture recognition is already available on gaming consoles, with Microsoft’s Xbox Kinect and the Sony PlayStation Eye both offering gesture-controlled games. Gesture recognition is also supported by Qualcomm’s Snapdragon computer chips, while rival Intel has also acknowledged the importance of gesture and voice control to the computing sector.
[ABI Research reports]