John Underkoffler’s demo at TED 2010 just scratches the surface of the gestural interface work being done by him and his team. Oblong, the company founded to commercialize the work has put out this demo video demonstrating the many interactions possible with the system they designed. The system utilizes the gestural language ‘G-Speak’ designed originally for the movie Minority Report, but with the full intention of being a robust language for real-world gestural interfaces.

John Underkoffler, MIT researcher and inventor of the user interface from the movie Minority Report, demonstrates the real technology at TED 2010. Having been working on tangible user interfaces over 15 years ago, his team was consulted to create a 3D gestural interaction language called G-Speak specifically for the movie Minority Report. The research as since been used to further gestural UI by other teams and is now making its way into the real world by industries which process large amounts of information. John predicts it could be as little as 5 years before the technology is integrated into consumer displays, with no special gloves or extra equipment needed. Perhaps it will be even sooner, given the launch of Project Natal for the Xbox this Fall.

Doubling up on its bet on tablet PCs, Microsoft is working on the dual-screen Courier booklet. Using both pen and gesture based interaction methods, the technology incorporates many of the interaction models we’ve seen developed over the past 10 years. Most interestingly is the fact that it is the first piece of technology to emphasize the light-weight notebook form factor while utilizing two displays. The potential is imaginative as usual and it will be fun to see where this leads.

Waving hands about to try on clothing at a store? This is how Cisco ushers out their vision for the future of shopping. Overall it just seems pretty far fetched that the main innovation in the experience shown is that of their new business router. On the other hand, Microsoft Xbox’s Project Natal may in fact be the technology that leads to such a customer experience. All in all, such an experience would be much better suited for home shopping. The primary benefit of in-store shopping really is the hands on touchy feely aspects… not the fact that they have mirrors.

Project Natal, a gestural input device, is being promoted by Microsoft this year at E3 is attempting to promote their ubiquitous computing platform. Hot off the heals of several other videos promoting Microsoft’s vision for the future, Project Natal focuses on the video game arena. Nonetheless, the vision is illuminating and enticing.

Pattie Maes, founder of the Fluid Interfaces Group at MIT Media Lab, speaks at TED in depth about the project Sixth Sense in collaboration with Pranav Mistry. While the project has received far spread interest and the availability of a short video earlier, Pattie’s talk at TED has now been released. Check it out to see many more demonstrations and potential applications for the Sixth Sense technology.

Pranav Mistry and Pattie Maes, working in the MIT Media Lab, have developed the Sixth Sense prototype which allows users to interact with information on any flat surface without the need for a touch screen.

Dan Saffer, experience design director at Adaptive Path, has recently released his new book called Designing Gestural Interfaces. In this lecture, Dan discusses in idiosyncricies of designing for touch-based interfaces.

Researchers from the University of Toronto use a Perspecta 3D volumetric display to create a set of finger gestures to interact with objects in a 3D space.