Intel’s new RealSense 3D web camera (that tiny, glass covered, front facing, hole in a tablet or smartphone) is about to get a lot smarter – it will be able to assess facial expressions, identify different users, sense hand gestures, and along with voice recognition improve human/device interaction.

It will know if you are paying attention (to a lecture for example), bored, or just paying lip service to the smart device – “Yeah whatev.” Let’s hope it does not include recognition of bad hair days and inebriated bloodshot eye days in its repertoire.

The camera can also make video chats more entertaining: it will be able to extract faces and bodies and superimpose them in other backgrounds – like green screen movies.

Intel and Microsoft will incorporate this into Skype leaving only a person's body in view during video chat. Intel has reached a similar deal with Tencent, which has 800 million users for its chat service.

The camera can also determine size, distance, dimensions, colour, contours, and other characteristics of objects through infrared and other sensors – it will be able to scan 3D objects that could be reproduced on 3D printers or inserted into games.

The camera chip was developed as part of Intel’s ‘perceptual computing’ effort to make human interaction with ‘machines’ more natural and interactive. It, not the central or graphics processor, processes the video stream making its chip/camera indispensable and harder to replicate.

Comment

This is a disruptive technology - that is good. It is similar to the work done by Microsoft with Kinect and Xbox. Knowing the strength of the Wintel (Windows/Intel) alliance, it is no surprise that Skype is one of the first cabs off the rank to use this RealSense feature.

The real value of this lies in areas such as user authentication, remote medical diagnosis, robotic companions, education, crisis counselling, and so much more.

It paves the way for human/machine interaction on a whole new level. Of course, this means less privacy as it creeps into security and home cameras and so on but it seems people are prepared to forego this for the utility it will provide. One day I foresee completely surveilled communities where crime is no longer an issue a.k.a. Minority Report and other communities where surveillance of any type is rejected in the pursuit of personal freedom – bring on Mark II of the Amish.