From Postcapes:
The combination of sensors and inputs in many smart wearable devices leads to some interesting possibilities for intuitive and immersive gesture-based user interfaces. A trio of Sony engineers (Peter Bartos, Alexander Najafi and Jonas Hellström) recently demonstrated this phenomena with their mashup project for controlling a quadcopter drone with a smartwatch and some prototype eyewear.
Drawing on the accelerometer in the SmartWatch 2, the drone’s movement is controlled by the tilt and twist of the wearer’s wrist. The SmartEyeglass prototype displays flight data and can even show images from the drone’s camera.
Both the watch and the glasses are paired over Bluetooth to a mobile device, which passes flight instructions to the drone over Wi-Fi.
The engineers published open-source code and a tutorial for replicating the project.
Comments
Another step forward.. And while yes, the human comfort level is certainly an issue I think the bigger picture here is the advancement taking place.
I'm a bit of a purest when it comes to using a controller, however, what this shows is that the controller can be done differently. I also see these specific pieces of hardware as not so much the next biggest thing but the technology as a great step forward.
Todd H.
Albeit cool, who wants to hold their arms out for any period of time to control something? Don't forget about the time and "human comfort" dimension when designing novel I/O devices. Forget about using your arms for any human related activity while flying your "drone." Might be interesting to see somebody waving their arms frantically while trying to recover their misbehaving flying craft. :)
I like this idea. Instead of a wrist watch why not build two command interfaces into the backs of gloves for a more realistic means to fly it. Depending on left hand dominance verses right hand dominance your glove/interface units could be configure like the radio setup in Europe and US with Mode 1 and Mode 2 or something similar. You would also need to build into the glove a motion command interface so you could temporarily disable flight commands to the drone so you could use your hands for other things like adjusting those cool specs. :-)