Motion Input in Windows 8

Not very long ago, the researchers used complex infrared cameras or stereo-vision technique to extract the depth information from the digital images. But these methods were computationally very expensive and also hard to calibrate. Microsoft came to rescue from this problem by presenting Kinect to the scientific community, which made 3D reconstruction lot easier and faster. Though the RGB camera of MS Kinect is not very good, but the depth sensor works reasonably well. 

Microsoft is now planning to use motion based inputs as a first order interface. Usually human motions are faster than traditional mouse clicks or keyboard hits. There are some researches in computer vision and also in psychology, which compares the traditional mouse with the cursor moved by eye-gaze. Results of these researches show that the eye-gaze cursor is faster. If Microsoft can detect the eye-gaze and use that information for mouse tracking, eye typing or selecting something, then it will be faster than the traditional methods. Again human gestures and postures are very important information in communication. If these features are detected correctly, then this information also can be used as inputs to the system, which will be more accurate input and faster.

Although, the current detection and tracking methods are not very accurate and fast, it will be nice to see how Windows can overcome these challenges. There may be some issues in the first release, but in my opinion, it will be a great step forward to the intelligent interface.