What if you could turn the music down on your phone by just waving your hand? That’s the idea behind AllSee, a new gadget under development by computer scientists at the University of Washington. Built by the same guys who created the gesture-recognition in the Galaxy Nexus, the tiny sensor works completely different than the feature in devices like the Galaxy S5 that require the use of the forward-facing camera. Instead, AllSee uses TV signals to not only help it recognize gestures, but also as exceptionally efficient source power.
Wouldn’t it be cool if you could skip to the next track without taking your phone out of your pocket—or without touching anything at all? Or if you could adjust the thermostat with the flick of a wrist? You may soon be able to thanks to new gesture-recognition technology. It doesn’t even require batteries! The new system, developed by University of Washington computer scientists, is called AllSee, and it is awesome. “This is the first gesture recognition system that can be implemented for less than a dollar and doesn’t require a battery,” said Shyam Gollakota, a UW professor who worked on the project. “You can leverage TV signals both as a source of power and as a source of gesture recognition.”