http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8ctQm1VOC6M
There are a couple of others on the same youtube channel. The tech provides the 6dof pose of all 17 bones in the hand (palm, wrist and 3 per finger).
Most of the hand/finger tracking solutions you'll find out there are based on 2D computer vision (image-centric) approaches that may require the palm to be directly facing the camera so it can look for blob center and extents (palm and extended fingers). We instead use a fully general 3D model tracking approach. (Its different than the particle swarm method used by the FORTH reseachers.) The goal is to provide dataglove output without having to wear a dataglove. Robustness and accuracy isn't yet perfect, and there are limitations based on depth sensor quality.
So you might be wondering why this would be relevant for the Physics forum. IMHO the physics and simulation crowd (you guys) are an audience that might be interested in the advancement of such technologies since you are the developers having the right skills to understand and potentially use skeletal pose as input. For example, we've been doing some initial experiments that use the pose data to drive a powered rag doll based on the relative joint angles. This virtual hand then can interact with objects in a physics scene. Imagine applications being development just by having an artist create content (physically rigged digital machines), and then, put the assets into an environment the user can reach into - no programming required. Admittedly, that's a fairly lofty vision as things can be a bit clumsy today: no tactile feedback, the hand can travel out of the field of view of camera, fingers may become occluded thus making it impossible to fully squeeze that object you are holding when the back of your hand happens to be facing the camera, etc.
This stuff got shown at CES, but there is no news on product or availability for any of this (or any other) full 3D tracking yet. If there's actual news, i'll follow up. Anyways, I've been having fun working on this interesting new frontier of interaction and (now that its public) I felt it was time to share.
![Very Happy :D](./images/smilies/icon_biggrin.gif)
Cheers.
-stan