MIT looks to create the future of the user interface

Remember how gorgeous the interactive UI system that Tom Cruise used in "Minority Report" in order to track escapees? Remember how it flowed beautifully as he quickly transitioned through files, pulled video feeds, and used real time GPS tracking all with the flick of a wrist?

MIT is now in the process of making science-fiction a reality by "manipulating real floating objects in 3-D space to create a truly tactile user interface", pretty awesome stuff is going on at the MIT media lab.

Jinha Lee, who is a part of the Tangible Media Group at MIT, has collaborated with Rehmi Post and Hiroshi Ishii in an effort to create a truly interactive 3-D user interface. The prototype is known as ZeroN. All of those cool things that we would see in the movies that we usually dismissed as an impossibility are now on the verge of becoming a reality.

“There is something fundamental behind motivations to liberate physical matter from gravity and enable control. The motivation has existed as a shared dream amongst humans for millennia. It is an idea found in mythologies, desired by alchemists, and visualized in science fiction movies,” Lee tells Co.Design. “I have aspired to create a space where we can experience a glimpse of this future. A space where materials are free from gravitational constraints and controllable through computing technologies.”

Alchemy, physics, and philosophy are all parts of an ambitious project that looks to revolutionize the concept of the UI. Check the video below for a demo of what has been accomplished so far.



via: Co.Design