Hands and pixels: from the “Minority Report” interface to a full-stack spatial computing platform

The future of computation will be characterized by real-time interaction with multiple screens and multiple devices. “Applications” will run as federated assemblies of processes executing across multiple CPUs. Graphics will render across multiple screens and displays. And architectures will enable harmonious use by more than one person at a time. Oblong Industries is a seven-year-old company founded with the goal of bringing about this future. Oblong’s full-stack platform, called “g-speak”, delivers multi-screen, multi-user UI components built on top of new networking paradigms and OS-level services. We’ll briefly examine the technology’s origins in complementary strands of research at the MIT Media Lab in the 1990s and its subsequent refinement through the Minority Report “prototyping experiment,” and will then discuss some of the unique aspects of the architecture and the unconventional influences on its design.

Speaker Details

John Underkoffler is Chief Scientist of Oblong Industries. John leads Oblong’s technological vision. His foundational work at the MIT Media Laboratory included innovations in real-time computer graphics systems, large-scale visualization techniques, and the I/O Bulb and Luminous Room systems. He has been science advisor to films including Minority Report, The Hulk (A.Lee), Aeon Flux, and Iron Man. John is also active on several boards and serves as adjunct professor in the USC School of Cinematic Arts.

Kwindla Hultman Kramer is CEO of Oblong Industries, developer of the g-speak Spatial Operating Environment. Oblong was responsible for the gestural interfaces in the film Minority Report, and the company’s current customers and partners include Boeing, SAP, GE, and others. Kwin’s background is in programming, hardware design, and the development of large-scale systems architectures. Before helping to start Oblong he served as the founding CTO of AllAfrica.com, one of the web’s largest content aggregators and a two-time webby award nominee. Kwin holds degrees from the MIT Media Laboratory and Harvard College and lives in Los Angeles.

Series:
Microsoft Research Talks
Date:
Speakers:
John Underkoffler and Kwindla Hultman Kramer
Affiliation:
Oblong Industries, Inc.

Series: Microsoft Research Talks