HP and Leap Motion Team Up

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HP and startup Leap Motion have announced a new partnership that will see Leap’s innovative motion control technology bundled with HP’s products. At first, Leap Motion’s controller will simply be bundled with PCs for sale, but later, the technology will be integrated into HP systems.

ReadWrite’s Nick Statt reported, “Leap Motion, creators of a motion-control device that allows interaction with a computer interface through hand movements, has announced a partnership with Hewlett Packard that will embed gesture control directly within HP hardware and get this technology out to more mainstream consumers. The Leap Motion device was already scheduled for a standalone launch on May 13, and the announcement calls for it to be bundled with HP products beginning this summer.”

TechCrunch’s Darrell Etherington added, “Now, [Leap Motion’s] announcing a collaboration with HP, to bring its brand of 3D motion control to that company’s devices, first via bundling the Leap Motion Controller with select HP computers, and then later by hardware integration that embeds Leap tech right into HP gadgets themselves. Embedding is a major step for Leap Motion, since it means users eventually will be able to access all of the company’s 3D motion control features without needing any kind of peripheral.”

Mashable’s Pete Pachal noted, “The Leap motion-control sensor, which connects to any PC via USB, will go on sale May 13 for $79.99. That device is currently up for pre-order. Leap claims its motion controller, which can precisely track the movement of 10 fingers, is 200 times as sensitive as other motion-control systems such as Microsoft Kinect.”

Anthony Wing Kosner with Forbes commented, “Leap Motion, as I have written before, is counting on developers to turn the potential of its technology into concrete—and wonderful—user experiences. By partnering with the world’s largest PC maker it is extending its bet on those developers to wake up the PC industry to whole new ideas of what people can do with their computers. If our computing devices are windows into a digital world, motion control lets us go in and grab things and bend them to our will. We become not just passive observers of our screens, but active agents that can reach in and manipulate things directly.”