My future is on its way

posted by Marc Wallis on January 10, 2008

Every once in a while I will run across something that stops me in my tracks. Yesterday it happened in the Panasonic booth.

I probably shouldn’t date myself by telling you that I was weaned on the Jetsons, and feed a steady diet of futuristic tech via the whole Star Trek series. My discovery of Panasonic’s Life Wall told me the future is here.

UPDATE: I’ve now posted a video of the demonstration.

The Life Wall is a room-sized wall video display that is manipulated via in-air hand waving and arm movements. The wall image can be changed (windows added with various outdoor scenes, pictures hung, wallpaper modified, etc) to suit your taste anytime you want. You can also access web pages, interface to your home automation and security systems, make phone calls, play videos and movies. In the presentation, she opened a video of an underwater scene with fish swimming around a reef, then resized it smaller and placed it on top of an image of a fish tank. She then opened a DVD movie and expanded that movie to take up the entire wall for true cinematic experience. Again, all this done through a navigation system that is controlled by in-air hand and arm waving.

Here, watch this video and it will all become clear…

Here’s a few photos as well…

View of the whole wall. Remember that everything you see on the wall is a video image - the fire is crackling in the fireplace, the beach scene outside was just switched from a snowy scene.

Example of manipulating the navigation menu through in-air hand waving.

Playing live video on the wall.

Selecting a photo and placing it on the wall with a frame around it.

Final photo placed and resized.

It’s not available yet, but it’s good to know that my future is on it’s way.

You can find more information and demos on the Panasonic website.

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tagged: CES, Intel, Intel CES, IntelCES, Life Wall, marcwallis, Panasonic