During their press conference at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) on Monday, Intel executives placed an emphasis on perceptual computing. They want your next computer to have "senses."
Computers might gain these senses — the ability to offer gesture, voice, and face recognition — thanks to a small accessory or by having the necessary components built in from the very start.
Intel's face recognition technology could be used to unlock devices just as some existing features might, but it will supposedly track more facial features and do so in a way that'll avoid the typical weaknesses of such tools (meaning that you shouldn't be able to unlock someone's computer using a photo of him or her).
The gesture recognition shownby Intel was quite impressive. It works within a 3-D environment and all 10 of your fingers can be tracked individually. In a game that was demonstrated, this allowed a user to grab and drop items with ease. This gesture recognition technology reminded us a great deal of that which was previously demonstrated by Leap Motion and so we are quite eager to take it for a trial run. Intel's voice recognition doesn't seem like it's anything beyond natural language voice-input, but we will certainly see how it stacks up against Apple's Siri and Google's voice recognition tools.
All of the technologies shown off by Intel already exist, in some form or another, in various gadgets. But the company is bent on bringing the best of these features together in a seamless way which can be incorporated into your daily computing experience. And considering the weight which Intel can throw around when it comes to dealing with computer manufacturers, we wouldn't be all that shocked if it pulled it off.
While we could see an accessory which could add all these features [or senses] to computers within the year, there's no word on how long it might take Intel to get all the right components built directly into the devices.
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