Leap is a touch-free, gesture based, 3d controller.
From the leap website (may 2012):
“Leap represents an entirely new way to interact with your computers. It’s more accurate than a mouse, as reliable as a keyboard and more sensitive than a touchscreen. For the first time, you can control a computer in three dimensions with your natural hand and finger movements.
This isn’t a game system that roughly maps your hand movements. The Leap technology is 200 times more accurate than anything else on the market — at any price point. Just about the size of a flash drive, the Leap can distinguish your individual fingers and track your movements down to a 1/100th of a millimeter.
This is like day one of the mouse. Except, no one needs an instruction manual for their hands.”
After a campaign of pre-orders during last moths, Leap Motion inc. is going to ship the devices (announced for beginnings of 2013).
When it was presented with a deep-impact video, a lot of people was sceptic regarding if it really worked as well. The creators decided to make immediately available a such hardware to the programmers (as part of the marketing campaign):
From the leap website:
“We’re distributing thousands of kits to qualified developers, because, well, we want to see what kinds of incredible things you can all do with our technology. So wow us. Actually, register to get the SDK and a free Leap device first, and then wow us.”
The response from the Blender developer community was immediate: the user “masterxeon1001” has received a kit and started to implement a python based add-on:
Masterxeon1001 writes:
So I was accepted into the leap developer program after writing a letter of how I dream to be the first to integrate it into python. I made a progress video explaining the plan and to also rally any python gurus to assist with making this marvelous device a member of the Blender arsenal. I plan to make progress videos weekly showing multiple applications it can be used in. Since the recording of the video I have already got the Leap Motion to work with the BGE and allow for FPS style controls using a frontend that has been written using the pymouse API.
Sure this integration could be very useful in a lot of domains: sculpting, navigation, modeling texturing/painting, etc..
Leap python integration in Blender (snapshot from youtube)
The human interface has become a reality during last years due to innovative devices as Microsoft Kinect or motion tracking software solutions based on low-cost hardware. Leap however seems to be in some aspects a completely new approach. The small dimensions of the device and the proximity of the interaction to the screen are crucial features for a desk-enabled workspace capable to replace the traditional mouse and keyboard approach. For more info, preorder or asking for a developer kit: https://leapmotion.com/
E. Demetrescu, CNR ITABC
