Ever since Apple acquired PrimeSense, the company behind Microsoft Kinect, we have been hearing rumours of a gesture based interface for the Apple TV. A new patent filed by Apple suggests that the hands free control will not only deal with navigation, but also be available within apps and games.

The patent details a projector, which emits laser beams and a sensor, which detects the reflected rays and uses the time difference to locate your hand. The device creates a “pseudo-3D” image of the hand and detects gestures to drive the interface. An example is the cover flow menu (in the image below), which can be set into flow with just a wave.

What is interesting is that Apple has mentioned it specifically that this technology can be used as a game controller replacing joysticks.

User movements detected by means of system 20 control an interactive computer application, such as a game, in place of tactile interface elements such as a mouse, joystick or other accessory.

The patent also mentions that the target of tracking needn’t be the hand and that any object can be 3D mapped, which might be a hint to the magic wand remote which Steve Jobs dreamt of.

The Apple TV 4 is scheduled to be launched next month at the WWDC, 2015. We do not expect this gesture based navigation to make its way to it, but is surely something to look forward to in future iterations of the set top box.

Read some previous reports of the hands free control of Apple TV. And if you are interested, you can go through the patent filing here.

Read more on the Apple TV 4.

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Remember OneCue, a media control device which we reported a while back? It lets you control all your living room devices including Apple TV, DVD/DVR, AV receivers, Philips Hue, Xbox and Nest, without even touching your remote and just by using gestures.

Three months down the road, they’ve acquired a new name — SingleCue and just released an app which brings similar technology to Macs. It is called ControlAir.

As you might have figured out by now, it enables touch-free control of audio, videos and other media on your Mac. ControlAir uses your Mac’s camera to track your hands and takes the appropriate action based on various gestures.

ControlAir is simple to use. Just raise your index finger in front of the Mac’s camera and move your finger left or right to navigate between the play/pause, skip, rewind and volume controls. To select a function, air-click by lowering and raising your finger and mute by placing a finger to your lips in a “shush” motion.

Developers claim these gestures to work from upto 5 feet away from the device.

ControlAir is compatible with any Mac having a front camera and running OS X 10.9 or later, and works with a variety of media apps like iTunes, QuickTime, Netflix, Spotify, Rdio, VLC, Vox and still more to come.

The best thing is that ControlAir accepts gestures even if the media apps are running in the background, so that you can have a truly touch free experience.

Although ControlAir is now available only for the Mac, this is a peek into what we’ll be seeing with the SingleCue – Apple TV combo, when it launches this spring.

So if you’ve been waiting for a genuine gesture-based touch-free interface for your Apple TV, this is the best step forward.

You can read more about the app here and get ControlAir from the Mac App Store for free.

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We’ve been hearing rumors of a gesture-based interface for the Apple TV since Apple acquired PrimeSense, the company behind motion sensors for the Microsoft Kinect. We’ve also seen Apple applying for many patents regarding the same in the past but, we expected all of them to just disappear into the heaps of patents Apple frequently avails but never uses.

However, this non-tactile gesture-based UI might indeed become a reality, as indicated by the brush-ups Apple has been doing recently. Last month, Apple reassigned the patents for the PrimeSense motion detecting hardware to its name. And a couple of days back, Cupertino was granted a new patent for a software built to work alongside this hardware.

This is what we know about the patent named “Three dimensional user interface session control”. Apple’s sensors will use infrared rays to track your hand movement in 3D, meaning in x-axis (when you move you hand to right or left), y-axis (raise or lower your hand) and even z-axis (towards or away from the sensor).

Users will be able to make simple hand gestures like waving to interact with the interface. One example illustrated in the application shows a swipe-up movement to unlock the device (image on top).

The artwork portrays a computer in the center but can be used by the Apple TV, the Apple television set or even the future Macs and iPhones. The patent gets a bit detailed about how the interface would work in various scenarios. If you’re interested, you can go through this detailed analysis by Apple Insider.

Unlike the patents that we usually see, the fact that Apple is actively refreshing and adding to this technology is some clue that they’re indeed moving on with this concept. Maybe we won’t see an Apple TV with 3D gesture control this year, but it would surely be something to look forward to in the later versions of our favorite set-top box.

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Product designer Radu Dutzan has come up with something all Apple TV users have been dreaming of for quite some time – a better way to navigate Apple TV menus. Apple has been relentlessly adding new channels once every couple of weeks and each of them comes packed with still another set of options. The number of remote clicks that stands between you and your favorite content is getting painfully high and that is where Dutzan’s concept comes in.

He completely re-imagines the Apple remote (image on top). In addition to the basic Play/Pause, Stop and Menu buttons, Radu’s remote comes with a built-in touch pad. It feels somewhat like the Magicpad and the swipes work like what we’re used to on our iPhones and iPads. A flick will send the menu for an inertial scrolling, while short swipes scroll the options one-by-one. You really need to see the below video to capture it.

Since it isn’t possible to physically create such a remote now, Dutzan has developed an iOS app which AirPlays to your Apple TV and gives you an idea on how this would work.

This is nothing like the official Remote app, if that’s what is going through your mind now. In fact, if you have a developer account with Apple, you can try it out for yourself. You’ll find the code here at Github.

Besides the new remote, Dutzan also conceives how the Apple TV interface could be redesigned to take full advantage of the new navigation system and still stick to its iOS 7 translucent behaviours (image above). And it looks awesome!

You can read Dutzan’s whole article on Medium.

So what do you think? Do let us know in the comments below.

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