Senior software engineer David Alfonso of Boston-based Pison Technology doesn’t resemble the sorceror’s apprentice from the old Walt Disney cartoon “Fantasia.” But with a wave of his hand, he seemed almost as powerful.
Armed with only a high-tech cuff wrapped around his wrist, Alfonso pointed an index finger at the robotic guinea pig Pison is using for its experiments, the four-legged machine from Boston Dynamics named Spot. He raised his hand toward the ceiling, and the machine rose to its feet, and then marched across the floor as Alfonso pointed across the room. Then he swept his hand downward, pointing at the floor, and the robot dutifully reversed its steps and curled up at his feet.
Alfonso was demonstrating Pison’s new gesture-control system, a technology that has so far eluded corporate giants such as Microsoft that have spent hundreds of millions trying to perfect it. Pison, a startup spun out of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, says it has developed a practical way to control all sorts of digital devices by intercepting the electronic traffic between our hands and our brains, and translating them into commands the machines can understand.
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