Imagine, how it would be if you can control your computer through a distance of few meters with your hands? Isn’t it sounds interesting? This is possible with sixth sense technology. When we see something we try to acquire knowledge through our five natural senses. With the help of these five sense it is possible to take some decision but it is not possible to gather all the information. Sixth sense technology helps us to eliminate this drawback. This technology helps us to bring abstract, digital information into real world and allow us to interact with this information through hand gesture. This innovative idea was basically proposed by Steve Mann in 1990. Then Pranav Mistry an Indian scientist came forward with this idea when he was student at MIT Media lab. He developed many new application with this idea.

Now, technically speaking sixth sense technology is a wearable gestural interface that makes the physical world around us effective with digital information. This technology let us use hand gesture to interact with that information.

Devices required in sixth sense technology- no special devices other than pocket projector, mirror, a camera, color marker and mobile components are required. These devices are common and are easily available. These components are placed in a pendant like mobile wearable device.

Working of sixth sense technology- Projector which is connected to mobile computing device projects the image on surface such as wall, book, etc. These physical objects such as wall, book are used as an interface. Colored markers are attached to user’s finger tips. When user moves his hand, his hand gesture are captured into camera which is attached to mobile computing device. Recognition of hand gesture is made using computer vision technique. Markers are used as a medium for tracking the gesture of user’s hand.

Sixth sense technology is extremely flexible and useful in today’s world. Some of the applications developed by Pranav Mistry are-

Teletouch– Teletouch helps you to interact with your TV, music player from far with the help of hand gestures. You look through camera of your smart phone and can control TV volume, turn on/off light, etc.

SPARSH– SPARSH helps to transfer media contents from one device(such as smartphone) to other. First you touch the content on your device which you want to copy to other device. Then conceptually these contents are stored in you. But in reality these contents are transferred to cloud.  And when you touch the other device where you want to paste these contents then conceptually contents are transferred from your body to that device. But in reality these contents are transferred from cloud that device.

Other applications developed are drawing application such as to draw on any surface by tracking the finger tip movement of user’s finger. These finger tip movement are captured with the help of colored marker. Sixth sense also helps user to draw icons or symbol. For example drawing ‘@’ symbol helps user to check his mail and drawing a circle on user’s wrist projects analog watch.