SoftKinetic Announces DepthSense 544 ToF Camera for Mobile Devices

SoftKinetic has recently unveiled DepthSense 544 3D depth sensing ToF camera for mobile devices, which they claim is the world’s smallest ToF camera, with the “highest level of efficiency available on the market, perfect for small form factors such as smartphones and wearables”. That’s all nice, but what does ToF mean? ToF stands for Time of Flight, and ToF cameras calculate the distance by measuring the time the light signal travels between the camera and the object as explained by Wikipedia: A time-of-flight camera (ToF camera) is a range imaging camera system that resolves distance based on the known speed of light, measuring the time-of-flight of a light signal between the camera and the subject for each point of the image. The time-of-flight camera is a class of scannerless LIDAR, in which the entire scene is captured with each laser or light pulse, as opposed to point-by-point with a laser […]

New Remote Technologies to Control Smart TVs

With Internet-connected flat TVs and set-top boxes, we can now use browse the web and play games. But the traditional remote is not up to the task and new solutions are needed to interact with smart TVs and internet STB such as gesture recognition,  wii-like remotes and tablet/smartphone control. A few companies showcased their solutions at IBC (International Broadcasting Convention) 2011, which took place between the 9th and 13th of September 2011 in Amsterdam: PrimeSense Gesture Recognition PrimeSense, an Israel-based company known for its range image sensor embedded in the “Kinect” motion-based controller for Xbox, began to promote the sales of its range image sensors to TV and STB makers.  PrimeSense ran a prototyped UI software on a notebook PC and controlled the UI by using a gesture recognition device connected to a PC. The UI can be operated by moving a hand. You can then control TV screen like […]