interfaces

Sony Corp has unveiled the Move controller for its PlayStation gaming console. The controller can be used with the PS3 Eye gaming webcam to translate user motions into game actions. The controller is shaped like a TV remote with a colorful ball at one end. More information is available in a press release.

South by Southwest (SXSW), originally a music festival, has grown into a collection of festivals and conferences covering music, film, and emergent interactive technologies. This year, there will be a panel titled What If Your Phone Had Five Senses? featuring Ted Power and Nicholas Jitkoff of Google, Matt Biddulph of Doppir, and Ben Averch of Microvision. Among other areas, this panel will touch on augmented reality, speech recognition, and computer vision. The panel discussion will take place March 14th in Austin, Texas, USA.

Researchers from University of Massachusetts Amherst (Beverly Park Woolf and Ivon M. Arroyo) and Arizona State University (Winslow Burleson) are developing intelligent computerized tutors in the Wayang Outpost project. The system incorporates a variety of sensors to detect students' emotions. For example, a camera is used to detect facial expression.

Gizmodo has discovered a Sony patent application that allows viewers, perhaps using the computer-vision enabled Playstation Eye, to throw tomatoes at characters in TV shows. Having one's avatar kick the character in the behind is also an option. Click here to read the article, complete with diagrams.

Google Labs has made available its new Image Swirl interface for image search. The search is started by typing a keyword. Then, by clicking on one of the results, a branched cluster of visually similar images is displayed. Anyone of those may be clicked on as well to repeat the process, providing a smooth and quick way to hone in on clusters of increasing similarity.

MagicSolver, a company founded by students from the University of Cambridge, has announced its Sudoku Magic iPhone app. The solution to a Sudoku puzzle printed on paper is automatically computed from a picture of the puzzle taken with the iPhone. One of the developers of Sudoku Magic will discuss the computer vision technology in the online workshop Online Where 2.0: iPhone Sensors for Developers.

Wise Foods, Inc. has launched a new computer-vision enabled augmented reality (AR) promotion for its Cheez Doodles® brand. Children can enter an online contest in which they make a stage on which they create a performance of the Cheez Dudes characters, captured by their computer's webcam. The AR promotion was created by Zemoga. More information is available in a press release.

Astronauts at the International Space Station (ISS) are performing a Wearable Augmented Reality (WEAR) experiment. The WEAR system has a headset with camera, motion sensor, and microphones. Processing is performed on a laptop. The voice-controlled augmented reality interface enables the astronauts to view procedures and manuals on a partially see-through screen, without using hands.

New media artist Mary Franck will hold a workshop for artists and programmers. The workshop will cover programming the MAX/MSP/Jitter graphical programming environment for interactivity, with an emphasis on computer vision. The event will be held in San Francisco on October 13 and October 15. See the workshop site for more details.

A computer vision project won first place in IEEE Canada's national capstone competition. The winning project, "Multi-Touch Multi-User Interactive Surface Using Computer Vision," was built by students at Concordia University advised by Professor M. Reza Soleymani. The $10,000 prize was sponsored by TELUS, a Canadian telecom company.