Sci-Fi Do Want: Minority Report gesture based computer UI's

Last time on Sci-Fi Do Want I raved about the coolness of the ED-209 from Robocop. With its menacing visage and absurd background, it soared straight into my sci-fi loving heart.
But this time we're going to be looking at something without the ability to blast you into pieces with 20mm cannons, though we stay in the realm of law enforcement.

Yes folks, it's the computer interface from the department of PreCrime, as featured in the 2002 sci-fi movie "Minority Report"

If you've seen the movie "Minority Report" then you know that the mouse and keyboard is going to be made obsolete by slick gesture recognition.
Never mind that holding up your arms in front of your face for 8 hours would certainly lead to excruciating amounts of pain and chronic injury to your shoulders and elbows. A little physical disability is a small price to pay to look that cool while checking your inbox.

Work with Excel spreadsheets *and* work out your upper body at the same time!

The interface in Minority Report works by the user putting on a special pair of gloves that enable the computer to track your hand movements. This is then coupled with a very large screen that allows you to easily grab and manipulate anything that's on the "desktop".

It's a system that is reminiscent of the gesture controls that we already see today on smartphones and on the Kinect, but of course without any of the many hitches and flaws that are present on these existing platforms.
I think that it's even cooler because you can almost imagine what it would be like to use it in real life, because it is so close to technology of today, yet it is clearly on a whole other level from anything that we have experienced so far.

This YouTube video shows the interface in action and even breaks down the component parts of it:

One of the coolest parts about the Minority Report interface is that we are actually quite close to being able to realize it. 

Sure, a giant wraparound screen may not be standard office equipment for most of us any time soon, but through Kinect there have already been several very cool attempts of recreating this user interface, as can be seen in this video:

Again, quite clearly we're still a long ways off until the smoothness of the interface from Minority Report, but you can very clearly see the possibilities and that is very exciting to me!

Going back to my opening statements that this would probably not be a very comfortable way of using your computer for several hours at a time, I think that this technology could never replace the mouse and keyboard, but I could easily imagine it being used for something like controlling your TV of the future (again, Kinect is already trying to do this with its integration into the Xbox UI).

I really love it when sci-fi and reality meets up like this, and since it's unlikely that we'll be getting shoulder mounted plasma cannons or Star Destroyers in the near future, I'm pinning my hopes that this is going to be one Sci-Fi Do Want that I'll actually get to enjoy within my lifetime.

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