The future of...remote controls

Music

>> Narrator: What would we do without our remote controls? For some of us they're practically glued to our hands. They do have their faults though. They're easy to misplace, they can run out of batteries and crammed with so many buttons, they can be hard to navigate. But in the future, switching channels may be as easy as waving your hand.

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>> Narrator: How will the way we watch TV change in the coming years?

>> Imagine being able to turn your TV on by pointing at it and going like this or turn it off by going like that.

>> Narrator: Jim Spare, CEO of Bay area-based Canesta, wants to equip consumer electronics with chips that allow them to see.

>> Jim Spare: What's unique about our approach is its very low cost and high volume which enables us to literally site-enable any type of electronic device.

>> Narrator: Using sensors devices could also track movement, gestures, specifically and understand them signaling the possible beginning of the end for remote controls.

>> Jim Spare: Our chip has an array of pixels similar to a digital camera. But unlike a digital camera, each of our pixels measure distance or measure the time it takes light to travel from the optical source of the object and into the pixel; and each pixel does this distance measurement for us independently and in real time so it looks very much similar in concept to these old pin art diagrams that we all used to have on our coffee tables where each pixel is a distance value, thus creating a three-dimensional image but then moves in real time.

>> Narrator: Instead of fishing for the remote control behind couch cushions, you'd wave your hand to activate the system; a menu pops up and by swiping and pointing, you control the TV and it's not only for TV displays. For mass weary business execs who spend a lot of time reading long documents or viewing images on their PC's, the technology could create a touchless user interface--just swipe. Ask Jim Spare what else the technology is capable of and his imagination wanders.

>> Jim: Imagine you're a professional business user teleconferencing from home but you don't want images of your children playing in the background or your messy house included in a professional setting. You can simply point and click yourself out of that scene and in front of a corporate logo. Imagine what can happen if you site enable something as simple as an alarm clock. Instead of having to roll over out of bed and hit the buzzer button, imagine that the alarm clock simply turns itself off when it notices that you get out of bed.

>> Narrator: It will likely be several years before those applications are available to consumers, but the first televisions that you can control with gestures should be in stores by 2010. The future of remote controls could lie in a flick of your wrist or a point of your finger. For Smart Planet, I'm Cemi Dos assumed spelling.

==== Transcribed by Automatic Sync Technologies ====