Well, it’s finally happened.

I’ve been repeating this one ever since I saw the first shadow puppet-show done with the Kinect camera, but the technology displayed on Minority Report’s gesture-based user interface has always been coming to mind with each new development. Now, student-hackers at MIT have finally brought this one into reality.

The video-game blog, Kotaku, brings us a beautiful video of the new interface in action, and some commentary,

So many Kinect hacks have teased a "Minority Report" style interface. Picked at its edges, approached it with half steps. This clip shows it’s not only possible with Microsoft’s new camera, it’s possible right now.

Using Kinect drivers for Linux, some kids from the Robot Locomotion Group and Learning Intelligent Systems teams at MIT have come up with a system that has Kinect detecting all ten of your fingers, along with your palms, and using them to allow interaction with a display.

Many of these amazing hacks started out with the original cracking of the drivers (by Alex P and Hector Martin) and from there the sky became the limit, the virtual sky at least. Numerous hacks have come to light once the Linux drivers hit the marketplace of ideas. And this particular development is only the most recent and it’s definitely one of the most interesting.

Using edge-detection and pattern recognition, the camera and software detect the positions and locations of the fingertips. The basis of this technology could be more amazing than just gesture-against-2D-surface interfaces. What comes to mind for me is the application to using sign language to interact with a computer. In fact, I imagine a version of Dragon: Naturally Speaking that instead translates sign language into text.

Still, that might be a bit off yet even with this development.

Until then, we can enjoy the amazing video explaining the hack.