Leap Motion unveiled its new gesture control technology earlier this week, along with videos showing the system tracking ten fingers. An endgadget writer characterized this tracking as “with ease and a single digit slicing and dicing a grocery store’s worth of produce in Fruit Ninja.” I don’t know if I would go that far (or use that analogy), but I did see it in action and doubts persisted as to the legitimacy of the claim that the Leap is 200 times more accurate than existing tech. Really? Accurate to 1/100th of a millimeter? Seems like a bit of a stretch to me, but I guess time will tell. At $80 I’m thinking I can afford to take a chance and see what the hype is about.

In “laymen’s” terms, what does this thing do?

It’s a mouse or screen controller for your computer.  It means that those of us without touch screen enabled laptops can now have that capability. It also means that you can control your mouse like a Microsoft Connect video game just using the movements of your hand or body. It means that you can channel your inner Darth Vader to control whatever it is you’d like to control without being able to use the force. Very cool stuff… if it works. I guess come mid May.