Control Computer Apps From Across the Room With AcceleGlove
by Lisa Hoover - Jul. 09, 2009Comments (1)
If you've got $500 burning a hole in your pocket and want to be the star of the next MMORGP you play, then grab the AcceleGlove, a glove that lets you use your hand in 3D space to control computer applications. The open source SDK package comes with everything you need to write your own interface and build gesture libraries, so you can go wild and come up with all sorts of cool uses for it.
The AcceleGlove was originally designed to help researchers study hand gestures without building a recognition device for each new project. Now companies are looking at ways to incorporate it into everything from educational sign language products to military equipment for use on the battlefield. The AcceleGlove's software is licensed under the GPL and is free for anyone using it for application development prototyping or research, however an additional license is required for commercial product development.
One of the most obvious consumer uses of the this high-tech glove is as an input device for gaming. According to the Web site, "AcceleGlove can use hand or finger movement to act as commands for controlling video games, robots, simulators, virtual reality environments, or any other video- or machine-based application you might imagine."
The technology behind the glove allows sensors to capture fine-motor skills like pinching and individual finger movement rather than just the broad-gesture capabilities of similar gloves. That's important if you want to use it in place of a mouse, trackpad, or other input device that requires small, controlled hand movement.
Although $500 may seem like a lot of coin, PopSci.com's Adrian Covert puts it in perspective. "MIT Tech Review says that other, similar gloves can cost as much as $5,000, which makes this seem like a pretty sweet deal," he says.
