Who can become the terminator of the remote in the future?

Lazy people are always easy to be dismissed, but also because of laziness, there have been many great inventions in human civilization. A large part of the development of science and technology is to bring convenience to people's lives. Washing machines, automobiles, and sweeping robots are all the most common examples. The button control method in the era of functional machines was eliminated by the smart phone's full-screen touch control mode within a few years. For television, the remote control has occupied human habits for more than six decades...

TV remote control has more than 60 years of history

Especially after the concept of smart TV or smart home emerged, TV manufacturers did not make much effort on the intelligent aspects of TV. The remote control was part of the attempt. Really want to achieve intelligent control, it does not seem so easy.

Old-style TV

I remember that when I was young, the black-and-white TV set at home was still controlled by a rotary knob. But if you go to the present, there will be one or two hundred channels, if you use the knob to change the stage, brain fill up that kind of scene, people do not know that you are thinking of a clock on the TV!

The television started a little later in the country. On March 17, 1958, China's first television set was born. In 1950, Zenith launched the "Lazybones" series TV remote control, which is arguably the first TV remote control, but it requires a wire connection. At that time, it can sit on the sofa and switch through a small knob. Already very happy, this also opened a new page of television control methods. Five years later, the first wireless TV remote control was born. However, due to the use of light signals, it is easy to receive interference and the accuracy is poor.

In order to improve the accuracy of control, in 1958, Zenith introduced a new wireless TV remote control that emits ultrasonic tones for control. Afterwards, the remotely-introduced infrared remote control and now the Bluetooth remote control have been deeply rooted in people's habits of using TV.

From 1950 to now, it has been 66 years. The remote control is still the most important and even the only way to control the TV. Have you ever wondered if there will be a form in the future that will make the remote control obsolete?

In recent years, after the emergence of smart TVs, the remote control has also gradually changed. TV manufacturers have also begun to try new control methods, trying to make the user's experience more convenient. For example, the remote controller increases the voice function, air mouse function, and gesture somatosensory operations, and even under the wave of the smart home, the mobile phone APP can also be used instead of the remote controller to control the television, but this is at most a variant of the remote controller. The experience is not that different from the remote control.

Speech Recognition

Voice control should be the easiest way for people to understand it. Siri on the iPhone, Xiaona on the WP phone, and Google Now on Google, including Domestic Information Technology, Baidu, and so on, are common voice assistants, enabling consumers to implement some basic control commands directly through voice. Among them, Microsoft Xiaona and Apple Siri are recognized as the best performers, but from the perspective of user experience feedback, they are far from real intelligence.

On the market, some smart TV products such as Skyworth, TCL, Micro-Whale, and LeTV have all supported voice control functions. From the actual experience, to a certain extent, it can indeed be easily operated, such as searching for program information, viewing the weather, etc., but it is also limited to some simple voice commands, and it also has different pronunciation modes, speaking modes and environmental noises for different speakers. Disturbance of the factors can not be solved for the time being, resulting in poor accuracy and insufficient use of home users.

Even Apple Siri and Microsoft Xiaona, who are at the forefront of technology, are inevitably criticized, and the voice recognition function on smart TVs is even more timid. However, in the future, the development of intelligent operations, voice recognition is still an important breakthrough. At present, the voice recognition function is still in the initial stage of development, and it is not enough to replace the remote controller as the mainstream control method. Perhaps when Iron Man's personal butler, Jarvis, was born, the super-smart system was able to meet most of the user's voice commands, including control of the smart TV. But... At that time, will television still be in this form?

Gesture control

Gesture control sounds quite mysterious, as if it were a specific function. Of course, what we are talking about here is not the type of control that draws a pattern on the screen that has already appeared on the mobile phone. It is a control mode that is truly non-contact and is completed by sensing 3D gestures.

Samsung, TCL, LeTV have already joined the gesture control function support. The user can install a gesture-sensing camera, and through a fixed gesture, the gesture control function can be called out to complete a certain control instruction. However, as with the voice function, the recognition accuracy is still not enough, and remember that some specific gestures also require a certain amount of learning costs, intelligence is not enough, or not as good as the remote control.

If you look away, the future of gesture control will play an important role in a more intelligent system, so it seems that Iron Man's butler Jarvis seems to be the ideal intelligent control can now think of, voice and gesture control Both have reached a very high degree of practicality. At present, many technology companies including Microsoft and Apple have started research on gesture control. In May of this year, Apple was granted a patent that focused on "pointing-based display interaction." This is where fingers from the knuckles to the fingertips would be used to refer to objects on televisions or computer monitors. It was like a human body. Same as cursor. This will also be used in Apple's future production of television or computer products.

Eye control

Compared with human 3D gestures, capturing eye movements seems even more high-tech. An example of how the human eye achieves control has begun to take shape on smartphones. This year, Samsung's flagship Android Emerger Note 7 supports iris recognition technology and can complete mobile phone unlocking instructions. Some brands of mobile phones such as ZTE and TCL also support the unlocking of eye lines, which means that human eyes can also become a type of control.

Not long ago, Apple’s approved patent (9454225) focused on “gaze-based display operation”. This patent determines the user's gaze direction by receiving a computerized user's eye image, and then determines the corresponding screen according to the gaze direction. Area, and operate on the content in the area. In other words, in the future, perhaps one of your eyes can make the TV switch channels, start up, shut down, and so on.

Conclusion: TV remote control has now had a history of more than 60 years, and the new control method may take longer, but there will be, which is also an inevitable trend of technological development. Speech recognition, gesture control, and eye control sound a bit more magical than simple. The only question is whether it is the new interactive mode that ends with the remote control, or whether the smart TV is now a new form. The answer is still given to the time!

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