AnthroTronix Acceleglove Motion-Sensing Handwear [Motion-Sensing Glove Wants You to Feel the Love]

Motion-capture is popping up everywhere. The Wii brought it home with its WiiMote and the iPod found a way to integrate motion-sensing into a portable communications device. The main problem with most of these motion-capture gizmos is that they aren’t very refined. By this I mean they are good at detecting big motions and not so good at the little ones. The Acceleglove by AthroTronix is set to change all this and its makers hope that the gaming world will be the first to notice.

So what makes the Acceleglove so cool? Besides the name, I mean. Well, the big point of differentiation is that it contains a set of highly sensitive accelerometers in the fingers of the glove. This has the potential to allow the user to make any series of rather complex and intricate movements with his hands and have them translated into digital movement on whatever device he is using. I am thinking that video game puzzles and the like would be a great market. Think about picking up small objects off the ground or turning the dial of a safe. Pretty cool if you ask me.

The Acceleglove is still in the development stages at this point, so its motion capture capabilities are somewhat limited to a small set of hand motions like pointing and pinching. That being said, there is certainly the potential for this little device in a boatload of applications so let’s hope they get the bugs worked out. Initial estimates on a street price put this one slightly out of reach at about $500. Should it reach commercialization in the near future I would expect this number would come down considerably.