GESTURE CONTROL USED TO DRIVE CARS

Concept Vehicles, Your Living Room And Life

By: Forbes Contributor – Jennifer Hicks

Microsoft MSFT +0.57% started something when it rolled out the Xbox with Kinect in 2010. The optical sensors in Kinect allowed players to use gesture to control and play video games. Now, a long (or short depending on how you look at it) six years after that tech hit the gaming world, gesture is making its way into other markets, including your home, cars and other everyday life activities.

But what will it take for consumers to really embrace gesture? Does it have to be more than a gimmick? Should it be a wearable or stand alone device? The jury is still out but at CES 2016 today in Las Vegas, we saw some new gesture and (haptic technology) make an appearance.

Going long on the gesture front is Volkswagen’s new E Golf Touch, a concept vehicle, which will have gesture control functionality in the new infotainment system. The company says consumers can expect to see gesture control in the next few years.

On the start up front there’s Grenoble, France-based Bixi that created a portable gesture device for control of the every day things in your busy life – your apps, reading on your e-reader, etc. Put the Bixi device next to your iPad, make your cake, scroll through your digital recipes and you don’t even have to wash off the cake batter or touch the screen to skip to the next page. 

The Bluetooth device recognizes eight gestures, has Gorilla glass, is always on and works across all operating systems. The company, who recently closed a seed round, says it will ship the device in Q2 2016.

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