Marie JonesAs the move to control PCs moves from keystrokes to voice gathers momentum, now there are plans at removing the need for keyboards altogether.
A research arm of technology firm Hewlett Packard based in Bangalore, India, is planning to simplify human computer interaction further by building apps that will recognise gesture control, to minimise the use of a keyboard and drive IT penetration in the country.
According to the Financial Express, HP’s Indian research lab has revealed that individual technology components are already getting transferred to the company’s business units.
“We are developing some applications for the Indian market that will be controlled using natural interfaces,” said Sudhir Dixit, director and chief technologist at HP labs India.
The lab is working on a prototype of a hardware ecosystem, and is also integrating technology that’s available off-the-shelf, such as TVs and mobiles, to digitise paper documents using a mobile phone, or synchronise entertainment between a phone and TV.
Following the release last year of its SiteOnMobile app which enables SMS and voice access to websites to allow Internet access from low-end mobile phones, the lab has just released a beta version of its personalised video app for computers, allowing users to create their own channels based on topics of interest to form a playlist of sorts.
Video apps are expected to dominate the Internet in India because of the number of Indian languages, which poses a difficulty for text based content.
“By 2013, the majority of internet traffic will be online video,” said Krishnan Ramanathan, senior research scientist at HP Labs.