The Wii is a runaway success as a gaming platform, of course. This Christmas season they can’t even be found. Good news for Nintendo. But this blog is about interactivity, not commerce, of course. What makes the Wii so interesting is that it has a unconventional input device – the Wiimote. The Wiimote is basically an IR receiver that can read the array of lights within the Wii sensor bar when pointed at it. It also contains an accelerometer that can determine its orientation.
The really cool thing about the Wiimote is that it’s an input device not quite like any other. Which means it can be used to create some interesting and innovative interactive experiences. There are already a handful of really interesting open source projects to take advantage of the Wiimote’s properties. A number of researchers have explored their utility for various uses.
A recent example was at the Adobe MAX 07 conference in Chicago. It was a glass projection wall onto which you could “paint” with a Wiimote by selecting various pattern swatches from toolbars similar to those in Adobe products like Photoshop. This is a fun and creative way to use the Wiimote as a pointing device.
But there are more practical ways to use the technology as well. Johnny Lee of Carnegie Mellon has done some really interesting research in this area. Better yet, he’s posted a number of YouTube videos to demonstrate that research.
In this video he uses Wiimote technology to mimic 3D display of information in a regular flat display by implementing head tracking with IR Wii sensors. It’s a very cool application of the technology. He has also previously used Wiimotes to create interactive whiteboards and to track fingerprint motion.
This technology is going to become increasingly accessible and I predict it’s going to become increasingly popular for interactive installations in tradeshows, museums, etc. Although I will note it has a big limitation – because the Wiimote is an IR sensor, it requires the user to either hold the Wiimote or manipulate some sort of IR source. That limits its use for self-service interactives that are not manned by staff. In this way, gesture-based systems based on cameras are still superior.
And I don’t think that anyone has come up with killer application of this technology yet. But I’ve no doubt that someone will.
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