High-end notebooks and ultrabooks will use WAVI Xtion

Feb 7, 2013 08:59 GMT  ·  By

Touch panels have begun to sell more now that Microsoft has included good support for this input type in Windows 8, but ASUS feels its customers, or some of them, would be better off with an alternative.

Back in September 2011 (two years ago, more or less), Asus revealed an in-house developed motion sensing technology called WAVI Xtion.

Then, in late 2012, the Xtion device was released. In short, it is a motion sensing entertainment device that can connect to desktop or notebook PCs and provide them with gesture control.

Recently, ASUS has also entered a partnership with Leap Motion, a US-based motion sensing technology developer.

According to Digitimes, the ultimate goal of all this has become the inclusion of motion sensing support in notebooks and ultrabooks powered by Intel's upcoming Haswell central processing units.

Even though Intel said it should be a goal of all ultrabook makers to include touch panels, ASUS thinks high-end models should be capable of more.

Touching a screen usually leaves behind smudges and smears after all, so it would help if there was a way to wave at the system to do this or that without actually making physical contact.

ASUS also means for Xtion, or a derivate of it, to be installed on all-in-one personal computers.

Finally, ASUS might do something similar with some monitors, or maybe smart HDTVs, but desktops will, in the end, be the slowest to adopt motion sensing, since it ultimately falls to customers to decide if such a thing is worth paying extra for.

Either way, whether or not motion sensing catches on will become clear several months from now. The Haswell CPU line needs to debut first, and then it will be a trade show or two before the waters are sufficiently tested and ASUS will have an answer to the question of whether 3D motion sensing is liked better than touch panels or not.