Natural gesture computer controls

Can you see a use for this in teaching and learning – The future is in the reach? (thanks to Steve Wheeler for the first tweet about this)

“Control your desktop and interact with apps through natural hand and finger movements with The Leap.”

Watch this and let me know what you think:

Comments and reviews that are coming in about the Leap Motion:

“Minority Report-like UI interaction? Yes please!”
Source: @mattcutts

“… 100 times more precise than Kinnect!”
Source: Mashable

“The goal is to fundamentally transform how people interact with computers and to do so in the same way that the mouse did, which means that the transformation affects everyone, both from the most basic use case all the way up to the most advanced use cases you can imagine for computing technology.”
Source: redOrbit

“The system is built on a small USB input device and a lot of sophisticated software, which the company plans to begin retailing next year for $70. For the price, users will be able to manipulate their machines with the kinds of gestures that are becoming more and more ubiquitous thanks to the explosion in touchscreen technologies–things like pinch to zoom, swiping between screens, or scrolling with the flick of a finger. The difference is that the user touches nothing; Leap 3D creates a four-cubic-foot interaction space in front of any computer that is more responsive than either a touchscreen or a mouse (and offers increased capacity for control by adding a Z axis to the touchscreen’s X and Y axes).”
Source: Radford Education

There are quite a few people wondering if this is real, I sure hope so, especially for those who have signed (and paid) up for their Leap ‘console’, which is due for shipping early 2013 (unless you’re a lucky one who get’s one of the early editions).

Is this going to make you think twice about Kinnect, or can they both develop alongside each other? Are there some topics or subject areas that will benefit from this more than others (e.g. chemical or biological simulations, sport or injury science, early stage learning, etc, not to mention gaming). What do you think … and will you be getting one or even signing up for a developers kit?

I would love to get my hands on this, and I’d love to be a better developer and designer than I am to get the maximum from this kind of technology. I’ll just have to settle with watching how others use/develop it and see if there is anyone around here I can join and help if they want to go down this route.