In its latest press release, ABI Research talks about gesture recognition technologies saying that they add another dimension to our interactions with machines. According to the research company, 600 million smartphones will be shipped with vision-based gesture recognition features in 2017.
To prove its forecast, ABI turns to camera-based tracking, saying that such technology has been in use for some time in game consoles like Microsoft’s Xbox (Kinect) and Sony’s PlayStation (PlayStation Eye). However, there are several challenges for gesture recognition technology for mobile devices, including effectiveness of the technology in adverse light conditions, variations in the background and high power consumption.
Leading chip designer Qualcomm has been heavily promoting its Snapdragon chipset processors’ visional gesture recognition technology in 2012, while Intel acknowledged gesture and voice recognition will be a “big deal” in the computing sector next year.
Currently, only a small number of the smartphones have gesture recognition, Pantech Vega LTE being a rare example. Qualcomm’s Snapdragon processor will support camera, infrared and ultrasound based tracking, providing smartphone OEMs and app designers with attractive techniques for new interactions and enhancing the users experience. Additionally, gesture recognition will be useful for tablets, portable media players and portable game players…
And we’ll stop here with additional details waiting for subscribers of ABI’s Mobile Device Enabling Technologies Research Service.