Spotlight: Hillcrest Labs Freespace

Articles: Event Coverage: CES 2007

Pre-CES | Day 1 | Day 2 | Day 3 | Extended Coverage

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Kurtis Kronk
Brian

Jan. 9, 2007

Specifications

Spotlight: Hillcrest Labs Freespace

After I played with Canon's 70-200 f/4L IS USM lens for a few minutes, I'd worked up a bit of an appetite, so when I saw a man waving what looked like a donut in the air, it should come as no surprise that we then stopped at his booth. Unfortunately it turned out not to be a donut, at least not one I was allowed to eat. Instead, it was Hillcrest Labs with their unique pointing device dubbed the Freespace.

The Freespace works similarly to a wireless gyro-based pointing device, if you're familiar with those. What makes it unique, however, is that the orientation of the device in your hands does not limit its functionality. Whether you're holding it upright, to the side, or even upside down, it still accurately tracks movement in every direction.

It has three buttons (left-click, right-click, power) and a scroll wheel and while it currently only works with PCs as we understand it, they hope to invade the TV and embedded markets soon. The power button will put the Freespace into standby mode and the cursor on the screen will then disappear. Their vision is to eventually have the Freespace bundled with set-top boxes from cable companies. And in case you're wondering, there is an IR transmitter which I guess would come in handy for doing things like turning off a TV or adjusting its volume, down the road.

Max and I both took a few minutes to try it out and we even got to put its groundhog-smashing functionality to the test. It took us each a few flicks of the wrist to really work it out - get used to it, I mean. For a moment there we looked like a pair of donut-toting monkeys, a rare sight at CES. Luckily, neither of us worked up such a sweat as to lose our grip and hit somebody in the eye -- it has a rubberized grip after all.

Overall the device worked quite well, and it is pretty intuitive to use. My one complaint is that I couldn't seem to get the cursor centered where my hands "center' position was, but I didn't have enough time to really see if this was a true problem that couldn't be easily remedied. I could definitely see using one of these over a traditional gyro-based pointing device for something like a presentation.

Max's Note: All things being equal, the device is still a prototype. We kept accidentally turning it off because the power button was between the left and right mouse buttons, which they're aware of and have some mystery fix planned for. And good news for the glossy-black donut-haters out there, the mechanism is not dependant on the design, so if the technology takes off, brace yourself for the possibility of traditional remote shapes.

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