This Technology Straight Out Of 'Minority Report' Is Real - And Soon We'll Be Using It Every Day

This post is sponsored by Intel.

Imagine you had the ability to video conference your boss at the beach while making it look like you were sitting in your living room. What if you could arrange photos on your computer by flicking your wrist, without even touching the screen? Or your computer could read your face and detect what emotions you were feeling, right at that moment?

While these futuristic abilities sound like scenes straight out of "Minority Report," they actually exist. Since 2012, Intel has invested a great deal of effort into its RealSense program. What Intel refers to as "perceptual computing" allows computers to "see" depth the way the human eye does, using an integrated 3D depth and 2D camera.

Business Insider Studios was recently given a personal tour of Intel's Innovation Lab, located in Santa Clara, to learn more about RealSense 3D technology. Intel's Director of Perceptual Computing Dr. Achin Bhowmik and Application Engineer Dmitry Ivanov led the tour, giving us a glimpse of several demos that showed the 3D camera in action.

"It's about giving the computer the ability to perceive the user and the world," explained Bhowmik. "As humans, we constantly see the world in 3D. We know how far things are, we know the shape of the environment around us. We wanted to add these same human-like senses to the computer to reinvent what the machine does."

What began as a bulky attachment in its beta stage has shrunk into a sliver of a device that can now be embedded into electronic equipment of almost any size. Intel's RealSense technology comes in three forms: a front-facing camera (which captures facial movements, tracks fingers and hands, and detects backgrounds and foregrounds), a rear-facing camera (that can scan and measure rooms and objects), and a snapshot camera (which can alter photo backgrounds after a photo has been taken).

One can't help but ask: Do we really need this technology? What's wrong with using a controller to play a game? Or swiping your screen to flip through photos? Bhowmik argues that advances like this don't make us lazy, but rather make our lives easier. "The same argument was made for the automatic car," Bhowmik said. "Initially people thought, 'What's wrong with having a stick shift?' But automatic cars became hugely popular because they made people's lives easier - the same way touch screens simplified computing devices by replacing or augmenting the mouse."

By the end of 2014, Intel RealSense 3D cameras will come already installed in computer devices made by Acer, Asus, Dell, HP, Lenovo, Fujitsu, NEC, and Toshiba, to name a few. Brands like Crayola, Skype, Scholastic, and DreamWorks have plans to incorporate the technology into their individual applications.

Bhowmik thinks computer devices are only the beginning for Intel RealSense technology. "This technology started with laptops and tablets, but we believe that it'll eventually be everywhere," said Bhowmik. "Everything that's autonomous - such as robots and drones - should have senses. The human senses receive information via seeing, hearing, touching, etc., and the human brain processes that information to allow comprehension of the physical world and enable effortless movements and interactions. The same should go for these devices."

Learn more about Intel's RealSense technology.

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