At the CEATEC mobile technology show in Tokyo last week, Japanese wireless carrier and innovator NTT DoCoMo showed off working demos of several cool new prototype mobile technologies. Its Grip UI (pictured at left), is a user interface that enables you to turn on your phone and control a variety of functions simply by gripping the phone in different ways. DoCoMo also demonstrated its ibeam UI for tablets, which uses eye-tracking technology to let you scroll web pages or turn e-book pages just by looking at them.
But the most exciting new technology DoCoMo showed off was its Hands-Free Videophone, wrap-around clear glasses that contain six 180 degree cameras — three on each side — to capture your mug. The videophone also has built-in software that combines the live camera images with your previously stored image data to create a real-time, avatar-like 3-D image of your head.
The cameras’ 720p resolution isn’t yet high enough to effectively render your mouth and upper body parts, so those use CGI based on your previously stored data. To render how you’re moving your mouth, the videophone uses the microphone’s audio data. When the resolution is increased, future prototypes will be able to use more and more video instead of CGI.
There’s also a seventh camera on the back of the videophone headset to capture what’s behind you, so the person you’re calling sees you with the actual background. Fortunately, DoCoMo seems to have optimized the background camera tech so that when you turn your head, the background renders smoothly instead of blurring.
DoCoMo says it plans to build a head-mounted display (HMD) in future prototypes to display the other caller’s image on the inside of the glasses.
Not quite Terminator-chic or even Google Glasses chic, the Hands-Free Videophone will need a style makeover before most people would want to walk around wearing it in public. But it may offer more engaging video conference calls in offices and homes — without the background distractions and wandering gazes typical of many webcam users.
Japan’s DigInfo TV checked out DoCoMo’s Hands-Free Videophone at CEATEC and posted this video:
The technologies have a ways to go before they’re ready for mass commercial availability, but we expect that it won’t be long before we’ll all be controlling our phones in many more ways than with just our hands.
What do you think? Would you trust and use the first mass-market videophone glasses, a “grip interface,” or eye-tracking phone technology? Let us know in the comments.
