India based startup Intugine, with a research and development team from one of the best institutes – IIT Kharagpur, is sparking a trend in the market with their product Nimble. A fascination with the idea of controlling thing from far using hand or finger movements, and an interest in gaming were the pathway to the idea leading to Nimble.
A gesture motion control device, Nimble is tiny and ring shaped and uses sensor combination to detect movements up to 15 feet from the sensor. This is the new age technology, leaving behind the tedious mice and their pads, and the keyboards. It aims to make everything controlled by just a simple gesture.
Intugine’s Abhishek Sharma states,
“Nimble is by far the most accurate gesture control wearable. Also, there is almost zero lag associated with Nimble. This helps in providing an awesome gaming experience as compared to other applications.”
DESIGN AND FEATURES
There are two rings, one for the index finger and the other for the thumb, designed for the finger tip and are less than 2 cm long. Nimble is expected to do alot of things with just the help of these two fingers. This tiny device is rechargeable, giving you eternal hours to its features –
- PC control.
- Letter Recognition
- Media Control
- Swipe, highlight, write features designed especially for MS Powerpoint.
- A lot of games and applications like: Fruit Ninja, Subway Surfer, Counter Strike etc.
- It will also provide APIs and SDK for application developers to develop new apps based on home automation, new games etc.
- Special optimization to control songs/videos within a range of 15 ft and to be used as a pointer.
SENSOR
It consists of a 3 feet long sensor which can be plugged into the USB port of a computer, powerful enough to detect any activity 15 feet away from it. The position of nimble is found with sub-millimeter accuracy and is updated faster than human eye can observe. It does not become bulky as any number of nimble rings can be tracked by just one sensor. And to further prove its friendliness to humans, it doesn’t emit any type of radiation.
THE CORE
The software being used is the soul of this device. Years of study and hard work pay off, it being able to calculate positions accurately while also managing to track many nimbles simultaneously. The environment mapping algorithms show their strength by eliminating any noise or disturbance in the surroundings. Gesture recognition adds to the experience of the user, giving them an ease with which any number of user defined complicated gestures can be stored and assigned applications and uses to easily.
FUTURE PLANS
The team plans to work on TVs, home automation, and gaming consoles. The team is also aiming on making the ring smaller and developing and Mac and Linux version along with creating more applications before the launch date. As written by techinasia, “Sharma says Intugine will also release Nimble’s SDK and developer units so that third-parties can pitch in.”
On being asked about the major problem being faced Sharma said, “The main problem we are facing is in terms of good prototyping facilities and getting the proper equipment required for further improvement of Nimble. We plan to go to China soon, where we have contacted a couple of suppliers via email and get the equipment and rapid prototyping facilities from there.”
With the launch date set to be sometime in the first quarter of 2015, and the pre orders already started, this is one device to be looking forward to.
Check out Intiguine’s website here.
