HP’s Leap Motion gesture-contol keyboard to go on sale as standalone product for $99

By Trevor Mogg Published June 9, 2014

The folks at Leap Motion revealed over the weekend that it’s about to start selling its keyboard featuring built-in gesture control as a standalone product. Up to now the keyboard could only be obtained through the purchase of certain HP desktop computers.

Leap Motion’s Kinect-like technology allows a user to perform a range of functions on their computer through in-air hand gestures and is currently available with the recently launched HP Envy 17 laptop as well as with a $75 standalone dongle.

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The San Francisco-based company informed engadget at the Computex trade show in Taiwan that it’ll start selling the special keyboard some time this month for $99, with users able to hook it up to any PC running Windows 7 or 8.

leap motion keyboard from hp — Image used with permission by copyright holder

As Leap Motion continues to oversee the steady expansion of its Airspace app store featuring software compatible with its technology, it’ll hope that offering the keyboard as a standalone product will help fuel more consumer interest in gesture-recognition tech, which could in turn push more developers into taking a closer look at the system.

As with its other products, Leap Motion’s specially designed keyboard allows users to perform a number of functions on their computer via various hand gestures. Able to track finger movements of “up to 1/100th of a millimeter,” a user can, for example, flip through photos on their display; browse the Web; draw and paint pictures; and mold and stretch 3D objects.

Contributing Editor

Not so many moons ago, Trevor moved from one tea-loving island nation that drives on the left (Britain) to another (Japan)…

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