Say goodbye to your mouse and keyboard – is “Leap” the future of device control?

Leap, say its creators, represents an entirely new way to interact with your computers. It’s claimed to be more accurate than a mouse, as reliable as a keyboard and more sensitive than a touchscreen, allowing you to control a computer in three dimensions with your natural hand and finger movements. 

Amazingly, it’ll cost just $70, and should be out in February 2013.

From the official site:

This isn’t a game system that roughly maps your hand movements.  The Leap technology is 200 times more accurate than anything else on the market — at any price point. Just about the size of a flash drive, the Leap can distinguish your individual fingers and track your movements down to a 1/100th of a millimeter.

 

Setup is just as intuitive.  Plug the LEAP into a USB port.  Load the Leap Motion software. Do a quick wave to calibrate. That’s it. In minutes, you’ll be able to interact with your desktop using natural hand and finger movements.

 

Two or three hundred thousands lines of code later, we’ve figured out how to use the Leap to create an interaction space around your computer, in 3D.  Able to distinguish thumbs from fingers, and even handheld items like pencils.  This allows users to interact like never before, using only natural movements.

 

And we went a step further. You will be able to create custom gestures that fit how you want to use your computer. It sounds too good to be true, we know.  But, that’s what we specialize in around here…

Confident words indeed. For much more check out the official FAQ. If this is as good as it sounds, Leap could be the biggest tech buzzword of the year - and beyond.

[Leap Motion]