Billboards Reach Out and Almost Touch Someone

Imagine a world where billboards watch you, react to your movements and invite you to interact with them. That world is pretty much here, reports MIT Technology Review. State-of-the-art motion-capture cameras in new Samsung billboards should provide all the interactivity of a touch screen—without any of the touching. The system could spawn a major new interface technology based on computer sensitivity to gestures.

Executives for Reatrix, the company behind the displays, point to hot products like Wii as models for familiarizing consumers with gesture-based products. But the interface still has some kinks. “There's an exciting opportunity here to create the standard gestural interaction with displays,” said Reatrix’s founder. “We want to be at the forefront of creating that.” (More advertising stories.)