Interview with Wiimote-Minority Report technology creator Johnny Lee

Posted Jan 15, 2008 at 5:53AM by QJ Staff Listed in: Controller, Interviews Tags: Bluetooth, Carnegie Mellon University, Game Informer, infrared, Wiimote
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Johnny Lee: on his experience with the potentials of the Wiimote - Image 1It should be remembered that it was Johnny Chung Lee who was able to copy the futuristic keyboard-free technology from "Minority Report" with the Wiimote.

Website Game Informer was interested to know how Lee came up with such an idea and therefore, an interview was set up.

Lee gave his thoughts on how he started and how the Wiimote has helped him with his PhD thesis. Lee is actually a PhD graduate student at the Carnegie Mellon University studying human-computer interaction.

He only started the futuristic technology as a "procrastination project" because it wasn't his main thesis. As a student who studied how humans and computers can interact, Lee was astounded with the features found within the Wiimote. He said:

ItÂ’s a pretty amazing piece of engineering, containing a high-speed infrared camera, accelerometer, plus it has Bluetooth communication, a vibration motor, speaker, buttons - and it does this all running off two AA batteries for a long time.


If you had talked about this a few months before it was released, I probably would have said it could not have been done, given my exposure to research. But they did it, and I was massively impressed.


Eventually, the Wiimote ended up as part of Lee's thesis when he was doing demonstrations. Since the Wiimote uses infrared-light-sensing technology, Lee considered the remote to be relevant to his study and decided to use it.

It seems Lee was able to do something definitely unique. With his advancements with the Wiimote, why not try out and do something interesting with your Wiimotes as well? Who knows what you guys can achieve with it.

Via Game Informer

 
 
 

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