Remember how impressed you were watching Minority Report when Tom Cruise used hand and arm gestures to control a huge computer interface filled with images, data and video? The good news is that you may not have to wait as long as you thought for your chance to do the same.

University of Buffalo’s Virtual Reality Lab have developed a “Fingertip Digitizer”. The user, like Tom Cruise, simply needs to gesture in the air while looking at a computer screen where a software program or computer game may be running. Users can transfer to the connected computer the meaning and intent of common hand gestures such as pointing, tapping the air or wagging a finger. Using gestures, a user could direct the opening or relocation of an electronic file or imitate the functions of a game controller.

But, Tom eat your heart out, the Virtual Reality Lab researchers have gone one better than gesture control with the Fingertip Digitizer making it possible to transfer precise information about the physical characteristics, including shape and size, of an object that is handled.

Touch and movement, are detected using thin film force sensors, a tri-axial accelerometer and a motion tracker all contained in the thimble-sized device that fitted to a user’s index finger. Hand gestures are tracked by the acceleration feedback and location of the fingertip device as the finger moves and gestures. A 3D object-digitizing application (Tactile Tracer) has been developed to determine object properties by dynamic tactile activities, such as rubbing, palpation, tapping, and nail-scratching.

What promises to be a revolutionary gesture-recognition device was developed by Young-Seok Kimnad and Thenkurussi Kesavadas (the director of UB’s Virtual Reality Lab). The Fingertip Digitizer could be used with any electronic device including cell phones, computer games, televisions, DVD players and set top boxes. Kim and Kesavadas demonstrated the device at the SIGGRAPH2006 Technology Conference from July 30 to Angust 3 in Boston. It’s expected that the Fingertip Digitizer and related software will be available within three years.

For more information, you may want to look at the original University of Buffalo news release.