The keyboard and mouse and touchscreen are some of the more common ways in which users can interact with virtual objects in the computer. However we have been exploring new ways of interaction, like we’ve seen the case of virtual reality, augmented reality, and also gesture-based controls like the Kinect.
That being said, researchers over at Queen’s University’s Human Media Lab have come up with a new way of interaction, and that is through drones. The idea seems to be combination of virtual and augmented reality, in which the drones will be able to act as physical controls. Dubbed BitDrones, they come in three flavors at the moment.
There will be the PixelDrone that comes with a small LED display; the ShapeDrones which are cubic objects; and the DisplayDrones which are drones with a touchscreen display. As you can see in the video above, what happens is that through a 3D motion capture system, the computer will know what you’re trying to do when you interact with the drones.
For example tapping one drone could call up a file, and that file could potentially be displayed in 3D form by having the ShapeDrones fly together and form that object in real-life, or at least a close replica. The user can then interact with the object by shifting the ShapeDrones around as they wish.
As it stands the drones are rather large but the goal is to create much smaller drones in the thousands where the end result would be much more accurate. It’s an interesting system although we have to admit at this stage, it does look a tad clunky. Perhaps that will change in the future, but for now it does hold some interesting promises.
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