The Ideum team is glad to announce that our gesture-based interactive module, part of our Touchless Design initiative, has won First Prize in the International Developer Competition sponsored by Ultraleap !

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In the era of COVID-19, when museums and other public spaces are particularly sensitive to providing the safest visitor environments possible, the competition was designed to spark innovation in systems for touchless interaction. We designed our touchless interface with a Leap Motion sensor that allows guests to use easy-to-master hand gestures to select options on a display, tap buttons, and move and drag objects—all without laying a finger on the screen itself. We recently produced this video previewing our approach:

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This mouse-emulation software uses bold colors and clean design to onboard visitors quickly. In fact, the Touchless Design SDK Version 1.0, designed to allow developers and museums to create touchless interactive exhibits, is now available on GitHub. The software is open-source and released under the GNU LGPL version 3.0 license. Please see our software license for more information.

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We have also created a hardware add-on designed to work with our Drafting Touch Table that provides additional onboarding and user feedback. The current version is based on the Leap Motion gesture-tracking device, but future versions will support the Intel RealSense D235 Depth Camera.

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Ideum began development of the system in April as the scope of the developing pandemic became clearer. In May, we received funding to support further development from Intel as part of their Pandemic Response Technology Initiative. We are continuing to develop and test the system to make it as intuitive and robust as possible.

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One of the first venues to use the new system will be the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., with a gesture-based gallery tour kiosk going live later this year. You can learn more about the project at Zeroing in on Zero-Touch Interaction on the ExhibiTricks blog.

We were glad to be part of the competition and congratulate the other winners and contest participants!