The Future is Now: The SixthSense

By Kalib Crone

"'SixthSense' is a wearable gestural interface that augments the physical world around us with digital information and lets us use natural hand gestures to interact with that information." -Pranav Mistry

Inventor Pranav Mistry, student of MIT, is a visionary with the idea that we should not be constricted to living our world behind a computer at home, but instead to be involved with the physical world around us along side with digital information.

Watch this video as Pranav demonstrates how his invention works.

Pranav expains on his website pranavmistry.com that his device is only made up of a projector, a camera, and a computing device, such as a smart phone connected to the internet. A projector to project the interface onto any nearby surface, a camera to scan nearby objects or to take picture, and the computing device to obviously do all of the computing and access the internet.

The camera detects different colors that are attached to the users fingers to take instructions according to what gesture the user carries out. For instance, if the user were to make the shape as shown in the following photo

SixthSense would capture a picture of the view that was between the users fingers.

SixthSense even has the capability to recognize drawn out symbols, such as if the user drew an "@" sign with his or her index finger, the device would log onto their email account, or if a circle was drawn on the users arm, a small watch like projection would state the time. It can even project a phone display in which one can dial a phone number to call.

Not only can SixthSense recognize what the user does with his or her fingers, it can even scan objects such as books, articles, or even plane tickets as shown in the video to give important information about the object.

Surprizingly, according to Mr. Mistry, to build the device would only cost roughly $350. This is an amazing price as building a computer is usually more costly. Not only this, but Pranav has even decided to teach any who are interested how to build this device for themselves. Pranav has yet to post his instructions on his site here but hopefully he will soon.

For now we must wait, but this invention is sure to place humanity one step closer into the future while still keeping it involved with the physical world around us.