Microsoft Corp. is about to dump the TV remote and offer in its place a technology that will eventually let you turn on your television with a wave of your hand or even open the sun roof on your car.
The company's goal is to change the way people connect to their technology, but it is starting first with the Xbox 360 video game console.
The device is called Kinect. When it goes on sale Thursday it will likely be one of the hottest selling electronic gifts this holiday season. Some industry experts believe as many as three million will be snapped up by Christmas.
Kinect is designed to work with the Xbox 360 gaming console. But it won't stop there.
The company is already looking past the video-game capabilities of the gesture- and voice-controlled technology that will see it lodged in everything from computer webcams to cars.
"The video game industry is pioneering something that is so revolutionary . . . it changes people's interactions . . . with any kind of machine," Kudo Tsunoda, creative director at Microsoft Game Studios, said in an interview with Postmedia News. "We are going to take this and have it spread out to a whole bunch of different industries."
And an Ottawa company is intimately involved at virtually the ground floor.
Francis MacDougall, Ottawa-based chief technology officer and co-founder of GestureTek Technologies, is watching the rollout of Kinect closely.
For many years MacDougall has been selling technology to allow people to control devices, such as cellular phones and museum exhibits, through gestures. His company is headquartered in California but does much of its research and development in Ottawa.
GestureTek has licensed some of its gesture-control technology to Microsoft for use in Kinect. MacDougall said Microsoft has already come back to extend those licences beyond just the Kinect sensor.
"They have begun discussions to extend the licences to Windows," said MacDougall. "You needed somebody to be that first consumer advocate, Microsoft took that role. This is the start of a new era."
MacDougall said his company has also been working with Canesta Inc., a California company that makes 3-D sensor technologies, to create gesture-based commands that can be used in cars and home stereo receivers. Canesta was acquired last week by Microsoft.
"It's like opening your sun roof with a swipe and controlling your entertainment centre by putting your hand in front of it," he said. "It's quite neat."
At its heart, Kinect is a special camera and sensor bar for the company's Xbox 360 gaming system. It will cost around $150.
The device tracks a person's movements and can tell the difference between a person's left hand and right hand. It can identify individuals based on facial features and it can track several players, even if their paths cross.
A built-in microphone also allows the device to be controlled by voice commands. To start a DVD, for instance, all that is needed is: "Xbox play movie."
Accessing an online catalogue of films and TV shows can be done with the swipe of a hand and playing a video game requires gamers to lunge, jump, punch and run as if they were actually in the game.
"What will be interesting is to see where this leads," said John Pliniussen, associate professor of sales, e-marketing and innovation in the school of business at Queen's University. "This is a new door to a new path."
Pliniussen said once people become used to telling their TV what to do, they "will want more. What's next?"
Kinect could eventually control all of the networked devices in a home. Furnace temperatures could be increased with the swipe of a hand and video from the home security camera at the front door could be accessed by speaking a command.
The device has the ability to make video phone calls between Kinect owners.
"This is all very exciting. Movies have been predicting this for a long time," said Pliniussen. "I think it's going to be huge."
Tsunoda said Microsoft created Kinect to clean up the mess that home electronics have become.
He said a basket full of remotes to control a DVD player, TV, home stereo and personal video recorder is a turnoff.
"For some people just using a controller is a barrier. I go home for Christmas. Every time someone wanted to watch a movie they would have to call me into the living room and say, 'Hey can you show me how to get the movie started on this darn controller,'" said Tsunoda.
"Everybody knows how to move their body. They know how to jump, how to dodge from side-to-side. Those are all things that are already very natural to people."
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