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Elon Musk took the futuristic gesture interface from Iron Man and made it real

• tonylemesmer 13y ago
  This video shows him rather ham-fistedly interacting with a 3D model of a rocket engine assembly, then for some reason he goes on to show it being 3D printed. Anyone involved in using 3D CAD and component design, including using Siemens NX which he refers to in the video will have seen or used a six axis Space mouse controller by 3D connexion which costs a few hundred bucks and is massively more precise than using a leap motion. These space mice have been available for well over a decade and use simple optical encoders to derive translation and rotation. No doubt the leap motion has uses at and beyond the desktop but it has a way to go yet to overcome the problems in the algorithms for interpreting gestures at a distance.
• jbrooksuk 13y ago
  Sadly, there is no creation or modification of hardware using the interface. I can see why, it's extremely hard to use CAD etc with a mouse and keyboard, let alone creating an interface just for hand movements. Impressive, only because they added hardware such as the Oculus Rift, but it's almost the same as the DNA demo for Leap Motion.
  • nixarn 13y ago
    Yeah I was hoping for more creating and modifying than just a CAD viewer. I wasn't that impressed with what he showed, nothing revolutionary.
• rwinn 13y ago
  Very similar to what Oliver Kreylos has been doing with the oculus and hydra controller. Check his videos out, some amazing stuff in there. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q_HH-ucA_Us https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q_HH-ucA_Us
  • ZirconCode 13y ago
    That's amazing!
  • scotty79 13y ago
    I live in cool times. I can watch it in 3d on el cheapo 3D LG 23' monitor and feel amazed.
• philbarr 13y ago
  Seems like we've got quite a long way to go before this is "Iron Man" quality. It looks like they've hooked up all the latest bits of cool tech to each other just for the fun of it. Having said that, it is cool...
• jpeterson 13y ago
  This man is an inspiration.
• kmfrk 13y ago
  ... using the software by Leap Motion.
• dirktheman 13y ago
  Amazing technology by what I consider one of the greatest visionaries of our generation. I do wonder however if this is something you could do all day, instead of using a mouse. It seems rather straining, holding your arms in front of you all day.
  • reeses 13y ago
    Unless there's no gravity giving your arms weight.
• Fuxy 13y ago
  It's about time somebody put this together. We have the technology necessary to build it. Nothing revolutionary though he just put the pieces together. It needs more tweaking before it can be very useful.
• ck2 13y ago
  I was impressed about a minute into it and then he said "that's what we were able to do a few months ago" I was expecting he would pull the monitor away leaving a 3D holographic projection. I guess I watch too many movies, lol But the glass projection looked fascinating.
  • ptrotter 13y ago
    Glass projection has been around a long time and typically uses a foil fixed to the glass and a rear projection projector. If you want to experiment it is an off the shelf component from suppliers like prodisplay.com or glimmscreensinternational.com and used probably most widely for shop and theater designers.
  • RVijay007 13y ago
    Wasn't this a scene from a Ben Affleck movie? Paycheck I think it was called.
    • RVijay007 13y ago
      For those that are interested, here is a link to the scene: http://www.criticalcommons.org/Members/ccManager/clips/paycheck-holographic-3d-interface http://www.criticalcommons.org/Members/ccManager/clips/paych...
      • bhouston 13y ago
        I worked on some of the interface graphics for Paycheck, but not this particular scene. Fun work.
• awjr 13y ago
  Dammit this man rocks my boat in so many ways. He feels to me like he's really pushing the boundaries of human innovation.
• jnardiello 13y ago
  Sorry guys. While the "concept" is nice, i think this is quite overselling a new "manifacturing" process which obviously (at least for anyone who has any CAD modeling and manifacturing experience) is far from being anyhow usable in industry. Why overselling? Because the precision provided by that tool (as shown in the video) is surely not enough to achieve anything other than reviewing CAD models.
  • progx 13y ago
    Yes and there is nothing new. Big Car Companies use such things since many years. Oculus Rift / or a normal Display and MS Kinnect make it obviously usable for a mass of users. Only the Software has to support the kind of IO.
  • deleted 13y ago
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• mhd 13y ago
  This looks nice, but I doubt that it's really much more productive than the usual 3D mice (SpaceMouse) setup that almost every CAD shop uses. Just like touchscreens are hardly superior to ordinary mice, when you can afford to lug the latter about. And much more prone to gorilla arm syndrome. So for a desk, this is probably no big win. Maybe for some kind of highly integrated CAVE setup, where you'd be wandering about.
  • johnyzee 13y ago
    What if this technology simply let you rotate, pan, zoom, etc. using your other hand, which would otherwise be unused? I don't do 3D modelling so I'm not sure if this would actually be an improvement, but getting the other hand into play seems like a good jump from regular one-handed mouse-intensive work.
    • Tloewald 13y ago
      That's what a space navigator does, and I find it pretty useless. The whole thing looks pretty lame to me. Essentially Apple's multitouch conventions partially translated to motion tracking.
  • jessriedel 13y ago
    > This looks nice, but I doubt that it's really much more productive... You're missing the point. Musk's life is actually an elaborate experiment to see what would happen if you took a very smart 11 year-old and gave him a billion dollars to build toys.
    • Symmetry 13y ago
      I dunno, space travel and electric vehicles are pretty high up on the "good for the human species" scale.
• jkscm 13y ago
  It looks realy akward when he needs to hold his arm still while closing his hands. I'm skeptic of the current state of "gesture/3D/motion/whatever" controls, but there is a big potential here. 3D design tries to work around the problem of working with 2D screens by showing multiple sides at once (Front/Left/Top/Perspective). You have to adjust objects in at least 2 screens to get it right, which isn't a perfect solution as well.
• jrkelly 13y ago
  Seems clear he is doing this to increase his personal brand as the "real life tony stark" as opposed to it actually being useful for engineering. His personal brand is an enormous asset on the balance sheet of his companies, so I really respect this - but lets call it what it is.
  • melling 13y ago
    So what? Let's hope that he's got a really bad case of it. He's got 7 billion dollars and a lot of resources that he can bring to bear. If he continues to take a deeper dive into its uses he could help spur further development. Either by creating the products with his team, or by purchasing third party solutions, thereby "investing" in other companies. Now Elon needs to figure out how to incorporate an exoskeleton suit into one of his companies. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Powered_exoskeleton http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Powered_exoskeleton
  • Roritharr 13y ago
    You are right. This has no engineering benefits, but it surely helps the Tesla & SpaceX Stock.
  • flexie 13y ago
    Of course this will be useful for engineering. Maybe not in it's current state but in future, better versions. He and his team are trying out some really cool ideas. While most of us work on apps that involve displaying text and pictures, this guy has the good fortune to be able to play with rockets and cars etc. Good for the World that not everybody is working on another app.
    • jrkelly 13y ago
      >Good for the World that not everybody is working on another app. Couldn't agree more with that. I'm just explaining the reason you are seeing this is primarily for PR purposes -- which is a huge part of his job. HN should be able to tell the difference between good PR and good tech.
      • 13y ago
• davemaya 13y ago
  This idea is very old and there is nothing new here. The first interface allowing to move object on screen using gesture or touch screen were abandoned. Why? because maintaining your arms in the air to manipulate object is exhausting. You cannot work more than a few minutes at a time. Much more promising are brain-computer interface.
• Demiurge 13y ago
  does this mean that Elon Musk is Iron Man??
• solistice 13y ago
  I'll have to go against the grain here, but this isn't anything special. The Leap has been around for a good while, the Occulus Rift has been around for a good while, and 3D Laser Sintering has been around for a while, along with every other technology they're using for this application. Also, I believe they're the wrong people to use it. Making the feedback involved visual instead of mathematical/geometrical has it's applications (quickly looking through the design), but it'll still have to be made to precise tolerances, and that's an engineers job, not a sculptors. On the other hand, it's perfect for sculptors and designers. If their setup is considerably improved in resolution, designers can get very fast visual feedback, and trying out things suddenly becomes very cheap. Architects can mold parts of their buildings, your furniture can get those last brushes before it's milled out, and your phone can be molded to "just perfect". But this isn't a Musk thing, nor is it an Iron Man thing, the idea has been floating around for a good while, the tech is there, they just went ahead and made it. That's not groundbreaking, and it isn't revolutionizing manufacturing.
  • mattmanser 13y ago
    the tech is there, they just went ahead and made it. That's not groundbreaking And that's where we disagree. To me that's the very definition of groundbreaking.
    • deleted 13y ago
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    • samuelfine 13y ago
      Exactly. If "going ahead and making it" was the only barrier, why didn't it exist yet?
      • solistice 13y ago
        Well, technically it exists. http://robbietilton.com/blog/?p=1589 http://robbietilton.com/blog/?p=1589 https://ccrma.stanford.edu/~adam/airharp/ https://ccrma.stanford.edu/~adam/airharp/ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JLqLmvL75B0 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JLqLmvL75B0 Robert Tiltons application is almost everything Musk seems to have done, except the lack of interfacing with CAD software (for example gesture based modification). The other 2 links are, whilst only tangentially related, really cool, so I thought I'd post them as well. So really, the question isn't "Why didn't it exist yet?" it's "Why was Elon's system featured on thenextweb, and Roberts wasn't?"
• stinos 13y ago
  Since when does designing something consist only of zooming and panning the obviously already designed object? Nice for presentation, but now try offestting a single component a couple of mm with it, which is something you typically do a lot in CAD.
• KingdomSprite 13y ago
  "Elon Musk Learns Leap Motion and builds a grabbing tool" should probably be the title. I don't get what the hype is all about. It looks as though as his team just created a program that can change the position and rotation of a virtual model in space. I know the community here on HN seems to worship Elon Musk, but that demo definitely was NOT making the Iron Man gesture interface real.
  • rogem002 13y ago
    Did you even watch past the first 30 seconds of the video?
• yardie 13y ago
  > To top it all off, the team then printed the part in titanium using a 3D laser metal printer. If such a beast does exist I'd be even more amazed than the leapmotion controller. But I have a nagging feeling the author doesn't know what they are talking about. milling =/= printing Edit: Well then, I stand corrected. I wasn't even aware there were 3D metal printers available.
  • supermatt 13y ago
    Laser sintering: http://www.eos.info/en http://www.eos.info/en It is an additive 3d printing process based on atomic diffusion. I believe I saw an advertisement (possibly for an eos model) where they 3d printed titanium parts for surgical replacement.
  • DasIch 13y ago
    Such a thing does exist and it's explained in the video, although it's not exactly printing and the wikipedia article doesn't call it printing either[1]. [1]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Direct_metal_laser_sintering http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Direct_metal_laser_sintering
• realrocker 13y ago
  We all know who Elon Musk is talking to. It's not us. It's the other billion people on youtube who will watch this and go, "this is the coolest thing I have ever seen".
  • itsallbs 13y ago
    This is definitely not geared toward techies. The closeup of the mouse and keyboard in the first few seconds is meant to make average people think "Oooh, this is high tech."
    • nrivadeneira 13y ago
      I think the close-up of the mouse is to illustrate his point about 2D interaction via mouse.
• kayoone 13y ago
  By using the Leap Motion SDK and something like Unity (a 3D Engine) this is really easy todo, well the zooming and rotating stuff atleast. Same goes for Oculus Rift integration. However, seeing it all combined like this using a 3D printer in the end is really inspiring, it just sparks so many ideas in my head immediatly :)
• deadslow 13y ago
  Why is He the tony stark and not the people who have been working with leap motion devices for years now?
  • Flenser 13y ago
    Do they make rockets?
• grannyg00se 13y ago
  What are the glasses shown at 2:07? They look somewhat like meta's spaceglasses but too dark. I'd be interested to know if there is another player in that market.
  • TomAnthony 13y ago
    I think they are just 3d glasses like you get at the cinema.
• mariusz79 13y ago
  Great, but how is it different from using a mouse wheel with CTRL/ALT/SHIFT combination?
  • Zoomla 13y ago
    it is harder to use then the mouse and keyboard combo and specially harder if you are going to use it all day.
• swamp40 13y ago
  The best critique I've heard of the Leap interface is that human hands are extremely proficient at manipulating small physical objects. But without any kind of force feedback, manipulating images using the Leap is neither simple nor easy. You must become like a good mime, and that takes a lot of practice and is very counter-intuitive.
  • knowaveragejoe 13y ago
    In my experience with the Leap it's more important to learn the limits of the capture space and the device's sensitivity in the individual application than getting the gesture perfectly right. Another thing that people don't get immediately is that you're not signalling at the visual medium on the screen to perform tasks, rather, the screen doesn't matter at all. It's a sensory feedback loop adjustment that takes a few hours of tinkering around, but once you get it, you get it. The main problem is gorilla arm and the tediousness of some tasks, the latter of which will hopefully be solved in software. Check out the 3D skull explorer app if you get a chance, it's the best implementation of gestures I've seen for the Leap, actually usable. I could definitely see people who regularly need to manipulate 3D models using similar metaphors.
• bachback 13y ago
  I wonder why he doesn't start 10 side companies run by other people. Say a CAD software company. It's a bit strange format to put out a 3:49 minute video.
  • kayoone 13y ago
    Focus. And with running Tesla and SpaceX i guess he already has alot on his plate.
• DanBC 13y ago
  HN again has some depressingly negative comments. It's good that there are people with the disposable income, and the engineering resources, to tinker with stuff like this. This particular iteration may not be interesting to you, but we're stuck with WIMP (or WIMP-lite) environments very similar to the 40 year old versions. (More colours, more animation, bigger icons, but little actual change). Kludging together desktop and mobile interfaces is being attempted (with a variety of horrible unpopular results) by many people, so it's great that other people are experimenting with other paradigms.
  • _delirium 13y ago
    I agree that tinkering is good, but this seem more like hype than tinkering. This demo (rotating stuff with gestures) has been done over and over, and hyped up each time as the future, like in the movies, and doing it one more time is not engineering and is not problem-solving. Real experimentation is one thing, but more glitzy demos that aren't actually usable is the last thing "virtual reality" type interfaces need: that's been what has sunk the field over and over for 30 years and gotten it a negative reputation. Particularly the part about how it's from the Iron Man movie is silly, because it's not like this is some futuristic interface that previously only existed in films. It's been done, in real life, a number of times. The hard problem is making it usable, not just demoing its mere existence yet again.
    • DonnyV 13y ago
      Maybe he's not showing us everything? SpaceX competitive advantage is that they do everything in house. So he probably doesn't want to show all their capabilities. But it sure acts as a great recruiting tool.
    • krschultz 13y ago
      I worked in a Fortune 500 company that designed mechanical product. Every single one of the 3,000 CAD operators in the company had a 3D mouse on their desk. You too can have one for $350 minimum. This stuff is not the future in that field, it's routine. Does it translate out to most people surfing the internet and jockeying Excel all day? No. But in the field of designing 3D mechanical things, 2D mice are not the norm right now.
• clientbiller 13y ago
  Elon Musk isn't Tony Stark, Tony Stark is Elon Musk!
• harrytuttle 13y ago
  Where's the bit where he designs something rather than throws predesigned meshes around? Also, I've seen people working in SolidWorks. They were far more impressive than this!
• ianstallings 13y ago
  ApeArms™: you're going to have them in the future. I don't think the idea of holding my arms out for interacting with the computer is a good idea, no matter who builds it.
• washedup 13y ago
  At one point while manipulating the CAD software, the person conducting has to use their hand as a mouse. They stick out their pointer finger and slowly move the cursor around. This is not much different from using a mouse. However, it makes visualizing the manifold very simple and intuitive, which gives this experiment real value.
• hardwaresofton 13y ago
  This is like the 8th (?) time I've seen this on HN. Also, roughly everything that is amazing about this interface is the Leap Motion Controller. They're not getting enough press from this.
  • talmir 13y ago
    "This is like the 8th (?) time I've seen this on HN." Congratulations! You are a special little snowflake. This was the first time I've seen this posted and I found it cool so I appreciate the post. Better not let new people see stuff you personally have seen before! What would the world come to if that was allowed?
    • hardwaresofton 13y ago
      Great job on the snarky comment buddy -- that'll definitely set me straight! Silly of me to consider it useful for people to check if things have been submitted before re-submitting them to the same listing/news source. Also, way to ignore my point, this article NOT cool. It's Elon Musk propoganda (and I think the guy is awesome) -- the real hero here is the Leap Motion controller, and not enough is being said about it.
• sp332 13y ago
  This looks quite a bit less useful than Oblong's tech, which is already commercially available. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fcMhZ9J0qN8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fcMhZ9J0qN8 That's John Underkoffler, the MIT Media Lab guy who designed the Minority Report interface and thought it was realistic.
  • JonFish85 13y ago
    Didn't a few people at MIT do this about 5 years ago? I seem to recall seeing something like this in demo form (not production-ready, obviously) about that long ago. It could read gestures and perform functions (i.e. if you framed something with your fingers, the built-in camera would take the picture), if I recall correctly.
• enscr 13y ago
  It's sillier than the 'MIT Sixth Sense' thing. Seems equally difficult to use.
• 31reasons 13y ago
  Can you really make hand sculpted rockets parts for rockets that can go to space ? I thought they need micrometer accuracy for million reasons and can only be "made" using CAD softwares with mathematical precision. Its a great demo but bit misleading.
  • Zoomla 13y ago
    It looks like a CAD person did the modeling using real CAD tools (maybe just a mouse and keyboard).
• ondross 13y ago
  So what he can do in the video is not exactly revolutionary. But none of those techs can live up to their potential without this kind of experimentation and integration with each other. It's not the next Tesla, but I'm glad to see someone taking these technologies seriously, even when they have some work ahead of them.
• outworlder 13y ago
  Too many negative comments here. Folks, "there's nothing new", until there is. At some point, new tech is a toy and dismissed because of its limitations. The whole idea is to identify those limitations and push through them. SpaceX actually has some use for new ways to interact with virtual 3D objects. Everyone is focusing on modelling, but there's also the visualization. Which can be more important than the modelling itself. For comparison, think about how much time you spend writing code, vs reading and debugging code. Technologies like these enables us to get new ways of looking at things. We are focusing on rotation and panning, but gesture-based interfaces can provide so much more. Also, we are thinking about people sitting at desks, where other input devices might be more desirable. But what about gesture-based screens in other environments. Say, at the factories themselves? We are visual beings and we like to point at stuff (and talk about stuff). Maybe a combination of speech recognition and gestures would enable new interactions with machines? Yeah, comparing to Iron Man is silly, but it is amusing. And easy for the average Joe to understand. That is PR, and NASA could learn from it.
  • deleted 13y ago
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• richardlblair 13y ago
  Screw all you haters, this is badass.
• nrivadeneira 13y ago
  I'll be honest, I was pretty disappointed by this. Elon is my hero so I was excited to see what he might have come up with, but this doesn't seem like anything that your average hacker couldn't build with the tools he used. I will say this, despite my disappointment, I'm very happy that Elon continues to push our imaginations and encourage us to believe that fantasy and sci-fi can become reality. As others have said, there are enough schmucks working on more apps (myself included) that it's refreshing to witness someone building something greater.
• rejuvenile 13y ago
  This isn't at all new in the world of mechanical engineering. Devices like the SpaceMouse (http://www.3dconnexion.com/ http://www.3dconnexion.com/) have been around for decades. What is new is the Leap Motion device Elon plugged into the workstation. All of the fanciness of this UI can be attributed to the Leap Motion, which has generally been available for about a month. So Elon plugged in a Leap Motion into software which is already programmed to use a Space Mouse, which took all of about ten seconds, then made a video and published it. What a publicity whore. He should refrain from stunts like this, lest people get the impression that every advance at Tesla and SpaceX is, in fact, something invented elsewhere and opportunistically seized upon with as little effort as this took.
• domdelimar 13y ago
  It's just a nice showcase of the emerging technologies, kind of like these guys did it (even better IMHO) months ago: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=keHXjidUmC0  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=keHXjidUmC0
• robomartin 13y ago
  My guess is that most commenters on HN have a CS background and are not immersed in the world of mechanical design. This demo is not unlike that saying about sufficiently advanced science looking like magic. Demos like these are definitely of the kind that provoke lots excitement from people who don't work in the field and, generally speaking, exactly the opposite reaction from those who do. I must also note that Musk is a deity on HN and, therefore, anyone posting anything counter to what he says is often met with negative reactions. In general terms one is labeled a hater and things go downhill from there. I straddle the software, electronics and mechanical design worlds and have devoted a significant amount of time and effort to mastering the tools of each discipline. In mechanical design my tool of choice these days is Solidworks. I have also used AutoCAD and ProE extensively. I would never, ever, in a million years, want to spend eight or more hours a day moving my hands around in the air to design mechanical parts. It would be a horrible productivity sapping experience. A trackball and keyboard, once you've learned the interface, form an effortless man-machine interface to design parts with software such as Solidworks. My preference is for trackballs. When using one, in a very real sense, you are touching, grabbing and interacting with the objects on your screen. It feels very natural. More importantly, it is fast, accurate and ergonomically sustainable for long hours. I realize I need to provide context for someone who comes from pure CS to get a grip on what I am saying here. Here it is: Imagine someone came along and suggested that instead of using VIM, your favorite editor or IDE you consider using this new interface that requires you having your hands in the air all day to manipulate graphical objects that, when linked together, create programs. It would look very slick. Perhaps they'd even make a reference to a similar concept see in a movie. You would probably recoil at the very idea and post negative comments on HN. Those outside the CS world would see it as an incredible potential advance in the field and call you haters for not praising an attempt to advance the art. That's exactly what we are looking at here. I can't think of many people who do MCAD for a living who would think this is actually useful at any level except for one: It might be cool to have as a presentation tool. It would be neat to allow anyone to feel like they are touching and manipulating objects in free space in an intuitive fashion. That's it. The other more subjective point I'd like to make is that I find myself wondering why Musk/Tesla/SpaceX are burning clock cycles working on anything outside of their core missions. The fact that he had engineers spend time on the Hyperloop and this doesn't sit well with me. I could be wrong, of course, and I am sure there are plenty who will point that out. I just don't think these companies are mature enough to engage in such pointless distractions.